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Guidebook / Core pipeline

04. Handling a small change (general cycle - small)

Guide3 min read

When ywc-plan judges a request as Small , it automatically enters this path.

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You are here04. Handling a small change (general cycle - small)When ywc-plan judges a request as Small , it automatically enters this path.05. Handling work split into multiple Tasks (general cycle - medium/large)If any of the following applies, ywc-plan routes to this path.06. Finish automatically from one goal (ywc-agentic)04 and 05 are manual control flows where the user invokes each step one by one ( ywc-plan -> ...

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04. Handling a small change (general cycle - small)

When to use this flow

When ywc-plan judges a request as Small, it automatically enters this path. The decision criterion is "can this finish as a single PR without Task decomposition?" If any item below applies, it is elevated to Medium/Large instead of Small (see 05).

  • Includes a DB migration
  • Introduces a new Library/Framework
  • Spans multiple subsystems

Overall flow

guidebook
ywc-plan -> ywc-code-gen -> ywc-impl-review -> ywc-create-pr
StepSkillRole
1ywc-planAnalyze the request and create plan.md (What / Why / Out of Scope / Done When)
2ywc-code-genGenerate Backend + Frontend + QA code in parallel
3ywc-impl-reviewFinal code review before opening a PR
4ywc-create-prPR creation -> CI -> Bot Review check

Note: The Small flow has ywc-plan produce plan.md (not a spec document) directly, so ywc-spec-ready - which operates on a spec document - is not part of this path. ywc-spec-ready is the spec-convergence step of the Medium/Large flow (see 05).

Note: ywc-code-gen does not have an automatic review flag such as --review. If you skip step 3 (ywc-impl-review), the PR is opened without code review, so this flow must run it explicitly. Executors in the Medium/Large flow can automate this step with the --review flag - see 05.

Example run

claude code
ywc-plan Login failure error messages are too generic to understand the cause. Want to show specific reasons like account locked / typo / not signed up
claude code
ywc-code-gen --spec plan.md --feature "specific login failure reason"
claude code
ywc-impl-review
claude code
ywc-create-pr --title "fix: show specific login failure reason"

If Bot review comments, failed CI, or merge-readiness issues remain, continue with ywc-handle-pr-reviews <pr-number>. The Small flow is based on plan.md, so there is no tasks/<task-name>/ directory and it does not fit ywc-finish-branch's task completion handling.

When you get blocked at each step

SituationAction
ywc-plan judges the work as Medium instead of SmallThis is normal - move to 05. general cycle (medium/large)
ywc-code-gen returns BLOCKEDThe spec may be unclear or project context could not be read - check the reported blocker
ywc-impl-review returns DONE_WITH_CONCERNSIf it is a correctness issue, fix and rerun; if it is an observation, record it in the PR description and proceed
The PR fails CIywc-create-pr or ywc-handle-pr-reviews checks the failure log and attempts fixes up to two times - if it still fails, the issue is surfaced as DONE_WITH_CONCERNS or BLOCKED

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