silver-bullet

Silver Bullet

Agentic Process Orchestrator for AI-native Software Engineering and DevOps.

Silver Bullet is the lifecycle orchestration and enforcement layer for AI-native software engineering. It owns the core project flow: intent routing, context, planning, execution, verification, review, security, documentation, shipping, and release discipline. Hook-backed gates keep agents from skipping required steps before code, PRs, deploys, or releases.

Plain version: describe what you want to do. Start with /silver. Silver Bullet classifies the task, composes the right SB-owned workflow, and records the evidence needed to continue safely.

"There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement..." - Fred Brooks, 1986

Brooks was right. Silver Bullet is not one magic technique. It is the coordinated process layer that makes AI-native delivery less dependent on agent memory and operator vigilance.

What Silver Bullet Adds

Silver Bullet now owns the knowledge-work and lifecycle behaviors it explicitly depends on as SB-owned skills. Optional plugins remain useful when they extend SB into DevOps, provider, data, documentation, or tool-specific domains, but they are no longer required for the core software engineering lifecycle.

Area	Silver Bullet owns
Entry point	/silver routes freeform work into a task-shaped workflow
Workflow shape	Dynamic composition from 18 atomic flows
Process discipline	Hook-enforced, state-tracked lifecycle evidence
Quality	Product, security, DevOps, docs, UAT, CI, and release gates
Delivery safety	Mechanical blocks on unsafe edits, PRs, deploys, and releases
Continuity	Session logs, handoff, issue capture, knowledge capture, anti-stall checks, and forensics

Current Positioning

Silver Bullet is an Agentic Process Orchestrator (APO):

• Agentic: built for AI coding agents that can forget, shortcut, overfit, or over-trust their own prior context.
• Process: turns SDLC discipline into explicit flows, artifacts, and gates.
• Orchestrator: chooses and sequences the right tools for the task instead of forcing every task through one rigid workflow.

Silver Bullet can still call optional extension plugins when a selected workflow needs a domain-specific capability, especially DevOps/provider tools. It does not use lifecycle-overlap knowledge-work plugins as default lifecycle dependencies.

How It Works

You normally start with:

/silver improve the account settings page and ship it safely

The router classifies the request, displays the selected route, and invokes the appropriate SB-owned workflow. Examples:

Intent	Typical route	Why
Build or enhance a feature	silver:feature	Runs SB context, planning, execution, review, verification, and ship
Fix a regression	silver:bugfix	Inserts debug/TDD before the normal lifecycle
Work on UI	silver:ui	Adds SB design contract and UI quality review around execution
Change infrastructure	silver:devops	Adds blast radius, IaC gates, promotion, and rollback discipline
Research a decision	silver:research	Produces a decision artifact before implementation
Prepare a release	silver:release	Runs documentation, UAT, milestone, release, and publication gates
Make a small safe edit	silver:fast	Routes low-risk work through a lighter path
Explicit legacy lifecycle request	SB equivalent by default	Legacy lifecycle names are compatibility routes unless the user explicitly asks for an external plugin

Dynamic Composition, Not A Fixed Script

Silver Bullet starts from two workflow families, then composes the exact flow chain needed for the task:

Workflow family	Use for	Composition surface
full-dev-cycle	Applications, APIs, CLIs, libraries, plugin work	Clarify, specify, plan, execute, review, secure, verify, document, ship, release
devops-cycle	Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD, cloud, ops	Incident path, blast radius, IaC quality, environment promotion, deploy/rollback, release

The canonical flow catalog lives in docs/composable-flows-contracts.md. It contains 18 atomic flows:

BOOTSTRAP -> ORIENT -> CLARIFY -> DECIDE -> SPECIFY -> PLAN
-> DESIGN CONTRACT -> EXECUTE -> UI QUALITY -> REVIEW -> SECURE
-> VERIFY -> QUALITY GATE -> SHIP -> DEBUG -> DESIGN HANDOFF
-> DOCUMENT -> RELEASE