flow-next-deps

Flow-Next Dependency Graph

Visualize spec dependencies, blocking chains, and execution phases.

Preamble

flowctl is bundled with the plugin (not on PATH). Define once; subsequent blocks use $FLOWCTL:

FLOWCTL="${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/scripts/flowctl"
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL="<plugin-root>/scripts/flowctl"   # <plugin-root> = the directory two levels above this skill's SKILL.md file (the harness gave you that file's absolute path when the skill loaded); substitute it literally
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL=".flow/bin/flowctl"

Setup

$FLOWCTL detect --json | jq -e '.exists' >/dev/null && echo "OK: .flow/ exists" || echo "ERROR: run $FLOWCTL init"
command -v jq >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo "OK: jq installed" || echo "ERROR: brew install jq"

Step 1: Gather Spec Data

Build a consolidated view of all specs with their dependencies — a single heavy per-spec loop for the whole skill. Steps 2 and 3 reuse the cached file (bash vars do not survive across prompt turns, so the cache is a file at a literal agent-composed path — compose <suffix> once, e.g. 4 random chars, and reuse the same literal path in every later block):

# ONE gather — Steps 2 and 3 read this file; never re-run the per-spec loop
SPECS_FILE="${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/flow-deps-specs-<suffix>.json"
$FLOWCTL specs --json | jq -r '.specs[].id' | while read id; do
  $FLOWCTL show "$id" --json | jq -c '{
    id: .id,
    title: .title,
    status: .status,
    plan_review: .plan_review_status,
    deps: (.depends_on_epics // [])
  }'
done | jq -s '.' > "$SPECS_FILE"
cat "$SPECS_FILE"

Done when

• $SPECS_FILE exists at the composed literal path and parses as a JSON array with one object per spec returned by flowctl specs --json.
• The per-spec flowctl show loop has run exactly once for this invocation. Steps 2 and 3 read that file. A second run of the gather loop has broken this.

Step 2: Identify Blocking Chains

Determine which specs are ready vs blocked (pure jq, works on any shell):