Prepare

Read plan or review findings from beads issue and create work structure.

Steps

1. Find plan source

   • If $ARGUMENTS is a beads ID → bd show <id> --json, extract design field
   • Otherwise → bd list --status=in_progress --type task, find first issue with title starting "Explore:" or "Review:"
   • No plan found → exit, suggest /explore or /review first

2. Parse plan

   • Read the design field content
   • Extract title from first heading
   • Find "Phases" or "Next Steps" section
   • Parse phases: **Phase N: Description** or ### Phase N:
   • Extract tasks under each phase (numbered list items)

3. Detect dependencies

   • Default: sequential (each phase blocks the next)
   • Override if phase text contains parallel markers:
     • "parallel with Phase N"
     • "independent of"
     • "no dependency"
   • Phases with no detected dependency on prior phase → parallel

4. Create beads structure

   • Epic: bd create "<plan-title>" --type epic --priority 1 --description "<desc>" --silent
     • <desc> = one-paragraph plan summary, then ## Success Criteria heading followed by 3-5 high-level outcomes extracted from the plan
     • Validate: bd lint <epic-id> — if it fails, bd edit <epic-id> --description to fix violations
   • For each phase:
     • bd create "Phase N: <description>" --type task --parent <epic-id> --priority 2 --description "<desc>" --silent
     • <desc> = ## Acceptance Criteria heading followed by the task-list items for that phase (one checklist item per task)
     • Validate: bd lint <phase-id> — if it fails, bd edit <phase-id> --description to fix violations
   • Set dependencies between sequential phases:
     • bd dep <phase-N> --blocks <phase-N+1>
   • Skip dep for parallel phases

5. Validate and create swarm

   • bd swarm validate <epic-id> --verbose
   • If swarmable: bd swarm create <epic-id>
   • Report validation results
   • bd update <epic-id> --status in_progress
   • bd close <source-bead-id> --reason "Converted to epic <epic-id>" (close source AFTER swarm creation succeeds — failures leave source open for retry)

   Optional: Extract reusable template If this epic pattern is likely to repeat (e.g., feature-workflow, bugfix-workflow), extract a proto: bd mol distill <epic-id> --as "<template-name>" Future runs can then use bd mol pour <proto-id> instead of manual epic creation.

6. Report

   • Display epic ID and all child issue IDs
   • Closed source issue #
   • Show dependency graph
   • Show parallel work fronts from validation
   • Suggest: /implement <epic-id> to start execution