Composable Workflow Orchestration

What Are Composable Flows?

Silver Bullet v0.48.3 is an Agentic Process Orchestrator (APO). Its hierarchy is Process → Workflow → Atomic Flow → Flow Step/Skill. /silver classifies the request via ROUTE, selects a catalog-backed workflow (for example silver-feature or silver-fast), and composes canonical atomic flow slugs from docs/apo-catalog.json.

Teams adopt process packs (PP-*) to reorder workflows, mandate gates, and require opted-in tools without forking atomic-flow definitions. The catalog remains the single source of truth; generated views (docs/composable-flows-contracts.md, docs/workflow-composition-matrix.md) are read-only renderings checked for freshness.

Each atomic flow is the natural delegated work unit: one subagent work package, declared inputs and outputs, mutation scope, dependency edges, and a local V-loop. Each flow step/skill also has a local V-loop that must roll up before the parent atomic-flow gate can pass.

Atomic Flow Catalog

The source of truth is docs/apo-catalog.json. Generated views such as docs/composable-flows-contracts.md, docs/workflow-composition-matrix.md, and docs/generated/atomic-flow-index.json are rendered from that catalog and checked for freshness. They are not hand-maintained workflow authorities.

v0.48.3 defines 27 canonical atomic flows, 22 workflows, and 85 flow-step contracts. Each flow step carries a local V-loop; evidence rolls up through atomic-flow gates to workflow intent gates. Legacy FLOW 1–18 labels are migration aliases only — not primary navigation.

Legacy alias map (migration reference only)

Legacy label → canonical entity:

Post-Execution Sequencing

Runtime order is defined by catalog workflow composition and orchestrator queues, not by legacy FLOW numbering. For delivery composers, the reusable post-execution chain after EXECUTE is:

1. UI_QUALITY when UI scope applies
2. REVIEW_REQUEST → REVIEW → REVIEW_TRIAGE
3. VERIFY (with verify-tests)
4. SECURE (with VALIDATE as needed)
5. QUALITY_GATE pre-ship
6. BRANCH_FINISH → COMPLETION_AUDIT → SHIP

Each child atomic flow must pass its own V-gate before the parent workflow can roll up to final user-intent validation.

How Composition Works

When you invoke /silver, composition happens in five catalog-backed steps:

1. Intent classification — ROUTE maps the request, project state, and active artifacts to a workflow such as silver-feature, silver-bugfix, or a dynamic route.
2. Catalog selection — the workflow contributes atomic flow slugs and reusable workflow components. No workflow tree is authored outside docs/apo-catalog.json.
3. Dynamic prune/insert/substitute — runtime context may omit already-satisfied atoms, insert missing preconditions such as DEBUG, or substitute a smaller reusable workflow when catalog rules allow it.
4. Subagent scheduling — each ready atomic flow becomes exactly one subagent work package; independent atoms can run in parallel, while conflicting mutation scopes serialize.
5. V-loop rollup — flow-step V-loops roll into atomic-flow V-gates, atomic-flow V-gates roll into workflow gates, and the final gate validates material user intent.

Per-Instance Workflow Tracker

The active composition tracker lives at .planning/workflows/<id>.md. It is created when a composition begins and updated after every path completes.

What the workflow tracker contains

• Active path — which path is currently executing
• Completed paths — log of paths that have exited successfully, with timestamps
• Deferred improvements — items noted during execution that are not blocking but should be addressed later
• Dynamic insertions — catalog atoms inserted at runtime (e.g. DEBUG after a failure)
• Composition plan — the full ordered chain proposed at composition time

Why the workflow tracker matters

The per-instance tracker gives both the user and the agent a shared, persistent view of what is happening. If a session is interrupted, .planning/workflows/<id>.md allows the next session to resume from the correct point in the chain without re-running completed paths. It also provides an audit trail for post-hoc review. The retired single-file WORKFLOW.md model is legacy only.

Supervision Loop

Each atomic flow in a composition runs under a local V-loop and parent supervision loop:

1. Input contract check — prerequisites, dependency outputs, mutation scope, and selected flow steps are verified before dispatch.
2. Subagent execution — the selected atomic flow runs as one subagent work package, and each owned flow step produces local evidence.
3. V-gate verification — step V-loops roll up first; then the atomic-flow V-gate verifies and validates the work product against the input that selected it.
4. Stall detection — If a path makes no progress for a configured timeout, a stall sentinel is surfaced to break the loop.
5. Progress reporting — composition logs record selected atoms, dynamic deviations, subagent dispatch/join status, evidence, and final intent coverage.

See Also

• Routing Logic — how /silver classifies intent before composing a path chain
• Verification Before Completion — VERIFY and dual-mode quality gates in detail
• Artifact Review Assessor — how REVIEW and REVIEW_TRIAGE handle findings
• Documentation Scheme — DOCUMENT and the per-instance workflow tracker as project artifacts