dev-flow
/octopus:dev-flow is the orchestrator that stitches the
individual PR-lifecycle commands into a single guided flow. It’s
not a daemon — it doesn’t run the whole thing autonomously. It
walks the agent through each phase, pausing for human input
between them so the developer stays in control.
Why orchestrate when each step is its own command
The individual commands (branch-create, commit, pr-open,
pr-review, pr-comments, pr-merge) are designed to be useful
on their own — you can drop into the middle of a flow you started
manually. But running the full lifecycle by hand means remembering
the order, remembering to push, remembering to assign reviewers,
remembering to merge. dev-flow removes the bookkeeping by
holding the state across phases.
The pauses matter as much as the steps. Without them, the agent would happily race from branch creation to merge in one turn, which is exactly the wrong shape — humans need windows to develop the feature, react to review feedback, and decide when the PR is ready.
The phases
| Phase | Command | Pause? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | /octopus:branch-create | After: develop the feature, then say “continue” |
| 2 | /octopus:pr-open | After: review the PR body |
| 3 | /octopus:pr-review | After: fix self-review findings, push |
| 4 | (assign reviewers) | After: wait for review |
| 5 | /octopus:pr-comments | Run per round of feedback; loop until approved |
| 6 | /octopus:pr-merge | Final |
The agent prompts the user at each pause boundary with a phrase
like “continue when ready” — explicit handoff back to the human.
The user resumes by saying “continue” or by invoking the next
phase’s command directly (skipping dev-flow’s orchestration if
they prefer).
When not to use it
Three cases where the individual commands are a better fit:
- Hotfix or trivial change. The orchestration overhead isn’t
worth it.
commit→pr-open→pr-mergedirectly. - Stacked PRs.
dev-flowassumes one branch from base to merge. For stacked work, run the individual commands per branch. - Mid-flow recovery. If you opened the PR manually and just
want self-review + merge, run
pr-reviewthenpr-merge.