Hydraia — Agentic Development Pipeline

This skill defines the ONLY approved way to build a feature. Run every phase your level requires, in order, automatically. Never ask the user which model, skill, or reviewer to use — those decisions are already made here. Never skip a step the level requires. Never pause for "should I continue?" between phases.

Announce once at the start: "Running the Hydraia pipeline." Then proceed silently through the phases, narrating at most one short line per phase.

Step-file architecture (how to run this pipeline)

The pipeline body lives in phases/*.md, loaded just-in-time. Read one phase file fully, execute it, then load the next only when its ## NEXT directs you.

• NEVER load two phase files at once. Do not skip, reorder, or pre-load phases.
• Follow each phase file exactly, the way you would a step file.
• phases/model-policy.md and phases/token-discipline.md are always-on reference (summarized below), not sequential steps — consult them as needed.

Always-loaded facts (carry these for the whole run)

• Route → phases (decided in Phase -1 triage): feature 0–6 (full) · plan 0–3 then stop · story -1–3 (PO-first) · perf/db -1–6 (measurement-first) · architect -1–6 (greenfield) · review 5–6 · graph codegraph only. Ambiguous route → AskUserQuestion.
• Levels (1 Light / 2 Standard / 3 Deep): Phase -1 picks ONE level by rule from three stated facts — intent gaps, irreversibles, footprint (files, public surface, security surface, gate.yaml overlap) — and announces it; it does not ask. Level 1 = one-file spec-plan + one Sonnet executor + judge + security-scan; Level 2 = spec + plan-contract + Sonnet executors + judge + security floor (default); Level 3 = full ceremony. Security surface forces ≥2. The human overrides by saying so or via customize.toml [pipeline].level. Agile stays a separate mode for epic-sized work (≥2 independent shippable goals) and branches through phases/phase-2a-decompose.md → phases/agile-orchestrator.md.
• Model policy (summary): Opus judges, Sonnet builds. This orchestrator session runs on Opus (any current generation) for triage, design, plan and grading findings. Opus sub-agents are only the judges (hydraia-reviewer, security-reviewer); every other agent is pinned to Sonnet, generic agents always get an explicit model, and executors reach Opus only under Max-quality routing. hooks/agents.sh enforces it (Opus gate). Full policy in phases/model-policy.md.
• Convergence contract (always on): a run ends DONE, DONE_WITH_FOLLOWUPS or BLOCKED(evidence) — never in an open-ended loop. Pre-existing failures (Phase-0 baseline) are asked about, never silently fixed. Fixes go through executors ([fix:<slug>]), never inline edits by this session. Runtime breakers end loops: same failure 2× → NO PROGRESS, 3× → STALLED (hooks/verifyloop.sh); fix budget and review cycles (hooks/agents.sh); plan scope (hooks/blastgate.sh); plan contract (hooks/plancheck.sh). When a breaker trips, stop and report — never work around it.
• Thin orchestrator: keep this session's context small — dispatches carry pointers (plan path + task heading), reviewers read the diff from a file, sub-agent reports are short, investigations return summaries. Executors already start clean per task.
• Execution routing: computed at Phase 3 and announced (asked only at Level 3) — Balanced (Sonnet all), Economy (Haiku for mechanical + Sonnet for logic/ui), Max quality (Opus for logic/ui), or Hand-off (freeze the plan, execute later on a cheap external runtime). The recommendation shows what each option costs/gets. Each plan task carries an Exec class (mechanical/logic/ui/qa) that Phase 4 maps to a model. customize.toml [executor].routing can pin a choice and make the run non-interactive.
• Customization: an optional customize.toml overrides the executor routing / per-class model / dispatch recipe (read in Phase 4) and the Phase-5 pass-2 reviewer panel (read in Phase 5). Precedence: repo <artifacts-base>/custom/hydraia.toml > global ~/.config/hydraia/custom/hydraia.toml > shipped skills/hydraia/customize.toml. Unparseable override → warn and fall back to shipped defaults. The always-on security gate is NOT customizable.
• Token discipline is background and always on (summary in phases/token-discipline.md): the caveman skill compresses internal comms only — never code, specs, or plans.

FIRST STEP

Read fully and follow phases/phase--1-triage.md to begin the pipeline.