Pipeline

Helm guides projects through a structured pipeline of AI agents:

DISCOVER    →    PLAN    →    BUILD    →    QUALITY    →    DEPLOY

Every Helm project follows this pipeline with 5 phases. Each phase has a specific purpose, and agents must meet quality thresholds before the project advances.

Phases

1. Discover

Agents: Scout (greenfield) or Survey (brownfield), Research

The Discover phase understands the problem before any code is written. Scout interviews you about goals and pain points for new projects. Survey analyzes existing codebases. Research validates findings against documentation and source code.

2. Plan

Agents: Planning, Architect, Roadmap, Breakdown

Planning produces a Product Requirements Document (PRD) with functional and non-functional requirements. Architect defines the technical architecture and patterns. Roadmap sequences delivery into phases. Breakdown creates individual tasks with Given-When-Then acceptance criteria.

3. Quality (Plan Gate)

Agent: Review

Review validates the entire planning chain. Every task must trace to a requirement, and every requirement to a research finding. Score must reach 95% before build starts. This gate prevents building the wrong thing.

4. Build

Agent: Build

Build implements tasks from the breakdown, following the architecture and validating each task against its acceptance criteria. Tasks are implemented in phase order with self-critique and testing at each step.

5. Quality (Build Gate) + Deploy

Agents: Verify, Ship

Verify validates that the implementation matches the spec by running tests, checking security, and scoring quality. Ship handles release preparation and deployment.

Greenfield Flow (new project)

scout → research → planning → architect → roadmap → breakdown → review → build → verify → ship

Brownfield Flow (existing codebase)

survey → research → planning → architect → roadmap → breakdown → review → build → verify → ship

Status Dashboard

  Helm v0.2.0

  Project:  my-api
  Type:     brownfield
  Phase:    build
  Profile:  guided
  Language: en-US

  Pipeline:
    [done]  survey       100%
    [done]  research     100%
    [done]  planning     100%
    [done]  architect    100%
    [done]  roadmap      100%
    [done]  breakdown    100%
    [done]  review       100%
    [>>  ]  build        in progress
    [    ]  verify       pending
    [    ]  ship         pending

Transitions

Agents transition automatically when:

1. The agent generates a handoff document
2. The agent’s score meets the threshold (90% general, 95% for QA agents)
3. No unresolved critical blockers remain

Modes