Workflow Modes
The HELIX skill routes every request to one workflow mode: a bounded document or workflow action with its own contract. The table below maps user intent to the mode the skill selects; each linked mode opens the full contract the skill follows.
Generated from skills/helix/SKILL.md, the HELIX skill. Edit the skill, not these pages.
| User intent | Workflow mode |
|---|---|
| Convert rough intent into governed HELIX work | input |
| Grill / interview / stress-test a plan or design until shared understanding (one question at a time) | grill |
| Create or refine product vision, PRD, feature specs, or user stories | frame |
| Reconcile artifacts, check traceability, find drift, align documents, or move content between artifact layers | align |
| Check an artifact instance against its template and prompt; edit resolvable findings in place | validate |
| Bring every artifact instance up to date with the current templates and prompts | refresh |
| Thread a new, changed, removed, or incident-driven requirement through existing artifacts | evolve |
| Create a technical design before implementation | design |
| Reconstruct missing or incomplete docs from evidence | backfill |
| Fresh-eyes review of recent work, PRs, plans, or implementation | review |
| Refine work items for execution readiness | polish |
| Plan or report a human iteration — sequence a roadmap, define workstreams, cut an iteration/sprint plan, write a status report | iterate |
| Decide the next safe HELIX action | check |
| Run an optimization experiment | experiment |
| Bootstrap a brand-new project from bare intent (name, research, vision, scaffold) | genesis |
| Drive a plan or completed work to convergence: review adversarially, fix, re-review until clean | converge |
| Audit where a project stands (specs↔impl↔tests↔ACs aligned? complete? next action?) | project-audit |
| Decompose an oversized code module/file into encapsulated units behind a verify gate | decompose-module |
| Build up end-to-end coverage as a ladder of increasingly complex real-client scenarios | e2e-ladder |
| Turn governed artifacts into a deck, one-pager, or brief for clients, sponsors, or executives | present |
| Hand governed work to the runtime for execution, source control, or packaging | runtime-handoff |
Contracts
Use for reconciliation, traceability audits, drift checks, and artifact content placement reviews.
Use to reconstruct missing or incomplete HELIX artifacts from evidence.
Use when the safe next action is ambiguous, when the user asks "what’s next" / "what’s blocked" / "plan the change", or when a single ask straddles two or more…
Use to drive a plan or completed work to convergence: review adversarially, resolve every blocking finding, and re-review until the review comes back clean.
Use to decompose an oversized, poorly encapsulated code module into focused units, iteratively, behind a per-iteration verification gate. This is code-structur…
Use when implementation needs design authority before build work.
Use to build end-to-end coverage as a ladder of scenarios of increasing complexity, each rung a durable automated test that drives the real runtime boundary an…
Use when the user wants to add, remove, amend, or thread a requirement through the HELIX artifact stack.
Use for metric-driven optimization loops.
Use for creating or refining product vision, PRD, feature specs, and user stories.
Use to bootstrap a brand-new project from bare intent: name it, research the prior art, draft a vision shaped by that research, and scaffold the HELIX structur…
Use to stress-test a plan, design, or change via a decision-tree interview until shared understanding. Distills the grilling technique (one question at a time,…
Use for sparse user intent that needs to become governed HELIX work.
Use to plan or report a human iteration: sequence a roadmap, define workstreams, cut an iteration plan from the backlog and roadmap, or record status against t…
Use to refine work items before execution.
Use to turn governed artifacts into a deck, brief, or one-pager a client, sponsor, or executive can read or watch on the first try. Output: a
deliverable art…Use on entry to a project with stale context to answer one question: where does this project stand? Are specs, implementation, tests, and acceptance criteria a…
Use to bring every artifact instance under a project HELIX tree up to date with the current canonical templates and prompts. Refresh is
modes/validate.md (fi…Use for fresh-eyes review of plans, PRs, implementation, or recent work.
Use when a workflow mode concludes that the next step is execution, source control, packaging, or a long-lived operator loop. HELIX does not own those surfaces…
Use to check a single artifact instance against its governing template and prompt, then edit resolvable findings in place.
Innsigle seal: model-primary by HELIX
The signature covers the markdown source of this page, not these HTML bytes. This page quotes that seal; verify it against the source file.
- Composition
- model-primary
- Issuer
- HELIX
helix - Signing key
ed25519:b0865d76d834a52c48506414d16f4e5a(build key)- Signed source
reference/workflow-modes/_index.md- Signed
- 2026-09-23T14:11:58Z
- Content digest
sha256:1759234d…0bb5b4e2
This build key is endorsed by the human key for build signing; the signature is not a detector and not a truth guarantee.
Raw attestation JSON
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