Pipeline

Helm organizes work into 5 phases with 13 agents (11 pipeline, 1 on-demand, 1 orchestrator). Each agent has a clear mission, defined inputs and outputs, and quality thresholds that must be met before progressing.

Phases

Phase	Purpose	Agents
Discover	Understand the problem	Scout/Survey, Research
Plan	Define the solution	Planning, Architect, Roadmap, Breakdown
Quality	Validate the plan	Review (95% gate)
Build	Implement code	Build
Deploy	Test and ship	Verify (95% gate), Ship

Greenfield Flow

For new projects starting from scratch:

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

Scout explores requirements through conversation — what are you building, for whom, and why?

Brownfield Flow

For existing codebases:

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

Survey scans the codebase first — tech stack, architecture, integrations, technical debt — then Research extracts what needs to change.

How Agents Hand Off

Every agent produces a handoff document stored at .helm/handoffs/{agent}.md. Handoffs have two layers:

Summary (max 150 lines) — Mission completed, key decisions, artifacts, self-validation score
Deep Context (optional, max 500 lines) — Complex discoveries that don't fit in the summary

The next agent reads the handoff before starting work. If the handoff is missing or incomplete, the orchestrator blocks progression.

Quality Gates

Two critical checkpoints ensure quality:

Gate	Agent	Threshold	What It Validates
Plan Gate	Review	95%	Traceability: Research → PRD → Phases → Tasks → Acceptance Criteria
Build Gate	Verify	95%	Tests pass, SAST clean, code follows architecture, acceptance criteria met

Verdicts

APPROVED (≥ 95%) — Proceed to next phase
NEEDS_REVISION (85–94%) — Specific issues listed, sent back to owning agent
BLOCKED (< 85%) — Critical gaps, restart from failing agent

Status Dashboard

Run helm status to see pipeline progress:

  Helm v0.1.0

  Project:  my-api
  Type:     brownfield
  Phase:    build
  Profile:  guided

  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