dia-guide

V-Model Workflow Guide

What this skill does (and does not do)

/dia-guide is the read-only orientation layer of DIA, invoked explicitly by the user. It:

• Reads BACKLOG.md, the latest DIA commit trailers (git log --format='%(trailers:key=DIA-Handoff,valueonly)'), and git state
• Recommends the next phase skill in plain text
• Audits whether the last phase-end commit carries the binding trailers (DIA-Phase, DIA-Handoff, and DIA-Triage where triage happened)
• Runs the Closing Handoff after a green /security-audit
• Owns two narrow CRUD moments at workflow boundaries: (a) the post-/dia-realign item promotion (below), and (b) the item-start branch creation when the user enters at A/B/C from a fresh repo

What the guide does NOT do:

• It does not perform artifact triage. Triage lives in every phase skill's MANDATORY Phase 0 block (see skills/project-conventions/references/graph-invariants.md).
• It does not enforce the plan gate; /coding runs it, the guide only reads the result.
• It does not run consistency checks per phase. The pre-commit hook enforces the drift-critical invariants; the full check runs before release (security-audit Step 7 / Closing Handoff).
• It does not call other skills. It recommends; the user invokes.

Item-start branch creation

When the user picks entry-point A, B, or C in the hybrid entry-point detection (see "Start: Determine Phase" below), the guide creates a fresh feature branch from the configured source branch before the phase skill takes over. The phase skill itself does not own this because the branch must exist before the first artifact is written.

Steps:

1. Read .dia/config.toml. Extract source_branch (default develop), mode, and profile. If the file is missing, fall back to develop, git-only, full.
2. Slug input. Ask the user (single AskUserQuestion, short plain-text "Other" slot) for a short kebab-case slug describing the item. The slug becomes the suffix of the feature branch name.
3. Branch creation.

   git fetch origin <source_branch> --quiet || true
   git checkout <source_branch>
   git pull --ff-only origin <source_branch> 2>/dev/null || true
   git checkout -b feature/<slug>
   

   If the branch already exists, switch to it and warn the user. Do not overwrite work.
4. Mode-aware GitHub side-effect. If mode = "github-sync" and an issue already tracks this item, remind the user to assign themselves so flow.py sync-status can mirror the assignee into the BACKLOG Claim column once the item has a real ID. The phase skill that first writes a backlog row calls flow.py create-issue.
5. Hand-off. Print the branch name, then recommend the phase skill: A -> /business-analysis, B -> /requirements-engineering, C -> /architecture.