Frequently asked questions

Docflow is a plugin: a bundle of skills and supporting files for your coding agent. A skill is a set of instructions that the agent follows. You give the agent a prompt in your project; there is no separate Docflow terminal CLI. Use the installation instructions for your agent.

Yes. Start with decisions, conventions and a plan queue in that repository. You do not need federation, a workspace home or a companion app. The single-repository guide uses guided setup and explicitly includes a plan queue; the express profile leaves the queue out.

Yes. Bootstrap can retrofit the conventions. Ask the agent to inspect the repository first and preserve its existing files, instructions and Git rules. For several existing repositories, adopt them into a workspace while retaining their native methods.

Federation connects the decision catalogues of repositories forming one product: where decisions live, how repositories reference them and how their catalogues are rolled up. A portable workspace records shared ideas, agreements, work and evidence across independent members. See the visual comparison.

Neither requires the other. Use federation for a product’s connected decision catalogues; use a workspace for shared coordination. They can coexist: the workspace links native decisions and deliveries while the federation retains its own identifiers, plans and completion rules. A single repository can begin with neither.

Not by itself. A portable workspace has an adopter-owned Git home with a registry, conventions and canonical records. The registry points to independent member checkouts; a checkout’s location does not make its files part of the workspace history. Follow the ordinary-folder adoption path, or resume an existing workspace if the home already exists.

No. Delivery members may use Docflow or another native method. Remote-only reference members provide context and remain non-mutating. A planned repository is a future delivery, not an invented checkout or active member; register it once it exists. The mixed-member guide explains these distinctions.

Run repository skills in the repository they concern. Run the five workspace skills from the workspace home. A handoff then sends bounded work to the chosen native member context; it does not turn the workspace into a remote writer. The skill catalogue lists the correct root for every skill.

No. Selection sets priority; acceptance records agreement. Native execution needs a current grant, a native claim and an explicit brief, with dependencies and resources checked before dispatch. See authority terms before dispatch.

Use the member’s recorded completion rules and checked native evidence. A plan, a readiness report or a handoff is not a delivery receipt. An unmerged pull request is not shipped where that repository requires a merge. Workspace sync reconciles returned evidence; accepting an agreement does not mark its delivery complete. Follow the day-to-day loop.

Open the existing workspace home and ask for a read-only status briefing. Check current records, native claims and returned evidence before selecting the next bounded action. Do not create a second home or infer progress from an old conversation. Use resume an existing workspace or recovery when evidence is missing or contradictory.

They describe different things. Package targets describe installation and discovery of the shared skills. Host guides describe context and brief/receipt handoffs on particular app, CLI or editor surfaces. A model name does not identify the host. See the two sets and their qualification limits.

No. Packaged assets, source/help evidence and deterministic checks do not establish native installation or model-driven execution. Full native qualification remains pending, and the seven guide smokes are unrun in the released inventory. Grok’s bare-name install selector is explicitly unverified; there is no assumed replacement command. Read the Grok evidence and qualification record.

No. The workspace is ordinary files in Git, readable without a companion app. Docflow’s workspace validator checks files; it is not a scheduler, authentication layer or live ownership service. See the workspace model and format reference.