Workflows and Flow Diagrams

Who this is for: Anyone who's installed the extension and wants to understand how the pieces fit together. What happens in what order, what calls what, what state moves where. This is the doc for "but why is it asking me that?"

TL;DR: Six end-to-end flows that cover ~95% of VibeFlow usage. Sequence and state diagrams in Mermaid (GitHub and VS Code render them natively).

See glossary.md for any unfamiliar term.

1. New-user onboarding (first 5 minutes)

You install the extension. VS Code reloads. Here's what happens next, in order:

What you see: walkthrough, then "Sign in" link, then three Quick Picks, then a "Connected" toast. About 90 seconds total.

What can go wrong: an invalid API key returns 401 from the server. The wizard surfaces the error and lets you re-paste. A non-HTTPS server URL is rejected by validateServerUrl (security guard from issue #1947). See troubleshooting.md for symptoms and fixes.

2. Launch a session (the most common action)

You click Launch Session in the Agent Fleet view (or run VibeFlow: Launch Session from the Command Palette). Inside, the Launch Wizard asks you up to 7 questions before spawning the agent:

The session-mode choice matters:

• Vanilla: agent asks permission for every file edit, shell command, git op. Safe. Default.
• VibeFlow (YOLO): agent skips permission prompts. Faster. You consent via a modal once per session.
• Chat-First: agent runs hidden, you interact through the Session Chat panel. YOLO is required (atomic bundle since issue #1611). Best for "talk to the agent like Copilot" workflows.

What you see: 5-7 Quick Pick / Input Box prompts, then a new terminal opens (in hybrid mode) or a chat panel opens (in chat-first mode), and a row appears in the Agent Fleet view.

3. Multi-turn chat: Vanilla session vs Chat-First session

The chat panel looks the same in both, but the plumbing underneath is fundamentally different. Knowing why prevents confusion when chat hangs at "Working…" forever (see issue #2305).

3a. Vanilla session: terminal-driven

In vanilla mode, the agent's primary surface is the terminal. The Session Chat panel is read-only-ish: it streams the agent's output, but the agent reads its instructions from the work items it pulls via wait_for_work, not from the chat panel.

The Session Chat panel for vanilla sessions shows a transcript, but typing into the input box is disabled, with an upfront banner ("This agent reads work items only. Type your request and convert it into a tracked todo or issue"). The "Convert to work item" button opens the ad-hoc work-item Quick Pick.

3b. Chat-First session: chat-driven

In chat-first mode, the chat panel is the input. The agent runs hidden (under tmux if available, otherwise a hidden VS Code terminal), and you steer it by typing.

The Session Chat panel for chat-first sessions has an enabled input, a textarea, an @mention picker (@symbol:, @document:, @todo:, etc.), file-drop attachments, and renders agent diffs / commit hashes / file paths as clickable.

Why two patterns: vanilla means "agents work autonomously on tracked work items"; chat-first means "agent is like Copilot but with file-edit powers." Different use cases, different UI, intentional.

4. Work item lifecycle: from idea to closed

Every feature, todo, and issue moves through the same status machine. The shape:

Where you (the human) typically step in:

• in_review: you review what an agent or another user filed. Decide whether to promote.
• done → security_review: if you're acting as the Security Lead, you walk the diff and approve or reject.
• security_review → qa_review: if you're acting as QA Lead, you verify the AC.
• Anywhere: you can comment, change priority, change branch, change parent feature.

Where agents step in:

• in_review → planning (architect agents claim items in ready_to_implement or architecture_review_complete)
• planning → ready_to_implement (after writing a plan)
• ready_to_implement → implementing → done (developer agents)
• done → security_review → qa_review (security/QA agents auto-poll for items needing their gate)

The review gates exist on purpose: silent regressions caught in production are the worst kind. Two recent incidents (commit e0ef3ad silently deleting #1947's three-layer HTTPS guard; commit 7a3d3be silently deleting #1614's @mention picker) are exactly what the gates are meant to prevent going forward.

5. Multi-persona handoff

A real workflow often touches multiple personas. Example: you ask for a new feature in chat. Here's what happens:

Each persona is its own session (one agent per persona on your machine, polling independently). They never talk to each other directly. Coordination happens through the work item's status field and execution log on the server.

You can collapse this: not every team needs all 9 personas active. A minimal team is Architect + Developer + QA: three sessions, the rest implicit (you act as the PM and Security yourself).

6. Worktree workflow (multi-branch parallelism)

When you want a Developer agent working on feature/foo while you keep working on main, you've got two options:

Option A: switch branches yourself

Stash your changes, git checkout feature/foo, launch the Developer agent, watch it work. When you want to come back to main, kill the session, git checkout main, unstash. Friction-heavy.

Option B: git worktree (the VibeFlow way)

Why this matters: you can have 3 Developer sessions running in parallel on 3 different branches, each in its own worktree, none of them stepping on each other or on your main checkout. The Agent Fleet view groups them under their respective branches.

Cleanup gotcha: the default cleanupOnKill="ask" modal does NOT surface dirty state (uncommitted changes). If you delete a worktree with uncommitted work, the work is gone. Recommended: leave cleanupOnKill="ask" and review the worktree's git status manually before clicking delete.

Putting it all together: a realistic day

Here's a representative day with VibeFlow active:

You spend ~35 minutes of human attention; the agents do ~75 minutes of work in parallel. The Activity Feed is your single pane of glass. It shows every transition above.

What this doc deliberately doesn't cover

• Compliance findings workflow: see the Compliance panel and chat-first-mode.md for the Security Lead persona's tools.
• Pull request creation: see VibeFlow: Create Pull Request and the branch-review status workflow. Single command; not a multi-step flow worth diagramming.
• CLI handoff (when vibeflow.cli.enabled=true): relevant for ~5% of users; out of the common-flow scope. See settings-reference.md.
• Document comments + persona handoff workflow: the comments feature is its own subsystem; see the Documents view's right-click menu.

If a flow you care about isn't covered, open an issue at the VibeFlow repo with the question.