stelow-workflow-router

Router

The router is the workflow control plane. It runs once per stage transition. It does not implement any stage logic itself; it only moves state forward and loads the next stage skill.

Contract

Input:

• state.md (workflow state with current_stage set)
• The previous skill's ## Hand-off (workflow mode) block
• STELOW_WORKFLOW=1 + STELOW_STATE=<path-to-state.md> markers

Output:

• state.md advanced (via scripts/stelow advance <next-candidate>)
• The next stage's SKILL.md loaded for the next agent turn
• A new ## Hand-off (router) block appended to state.md

Algorithm

# 1. Read current_stage and the previous skill's Hand-off block.
current=$(scripts/stelow status --json | jq -r .current_stage)
next=$(extract_hand_off_field next-candidate)

# 2. Validate next against transitions.md.
transitions=skills/stelow-workflow-orchestrator/references/transitions.md
allowed=$(awk "/^### $current\$/,/^### |\$/" "$transitions" \
            | grep -E "^(next|accept|rework):" \
            | head -1 | awk "{print \$2}" | tr -d "[],\"")
if ! echo "$allowed" | grep -qw "$next"; then
  echo "router: rejected '$next' (allowed from $current: $allowed)"
  # rework path: return to previous stage
  prev=$(echo "$allowed" | head -1)
  scripts/stelow advance "$prev"
  load_skill "$prev"
  exit 1
fi

# 3. Advance state and load next stage.
scripts/stelow advance "$next"

# 4. Append router Hand-off (audit).
cat >> "$STELOW_STATE" <<EOF
## Hand-off (router) — $(date -Iseconds)
from        : $current
to          : $next
skill loaded: stelow-product-$next
EOF

Reject / rework path

If next is not in the allowed list:

• Default behavior: advance to the first rework candidate (or the reject candidate if no rework is defined) so the workflow can recover without manual intervention.
• Record the rejection in state.md body so the next agent can see why it was bounced.

Total load budget

≤ 5k tokens (per SCOPE-4 NFR). No domain logic, no copy from stage skills — just the algorithm above plus the conventions below.