Use the chat concierge
You do not have to learn any verbs. Chat is the default front door: say what you want, and the concierge works out where you are and proposes one next step.
Just say what you want
Section titled “Just say what you want”Open your agent in the project directory and type a normal sentence:
“I want to build an inventory app for my shop.”
“Where am I?”
“Is this card done?”
The concierge answers in the language you used. Reply in Vietnamese and you get Vietnamese back; flow’s own law and reference files stay English-canonical either way.
What it does before answering
Section titled “What it does before answering”Every natural-language ask goes through the same short loop, and step one is not negotiable:
- It runs the status command — or
resumeif you are entering a project cold — to get mechanical ground truth. It never guesses your state from the conversation. - It matches your intent against a routing table of intent-class and state.
- It proposes exactly one next action, in plain language, explaining any gate concept in a sentence the first time it appears.
- It offers to run that action, following the permission rules below.
One proposal at a time is deliberate. You will not get the full verb list dumped on you because you asked a simple question.
What it may run without asking
Section titled “What it may run without asking”Read-only commands that cannot mutate state are run directly, because asking permission to look at something is just friction:
status, resume, recall, usage, coherence, consistency, contract, tokens,
constitution, clarify, design, doctor, ready, gate.
What it must ask you first
Section titled “What it must ask you first”Anything that mutates state, costs money, or belongs to you as the operator is confirmed before it runs:
next, assess, card, check, project-type, skip, debt, harness, promote,
mode, auto, attest, workspace, unlock, retro, eval, converge.
The rule is default-deny: any verb not on the read-only list above is must-ask, including verbs added to flow after the routing file was written.
next is on the must-ask list even though it looks like it only advances a gate that already
passed. Its pass condition — mechanical layer and semantic challenge both agreeing —
cannot be known before it runs. Auto-running it would let the concierge quietly push a
hollow-but-mechanically-clean stage past you, which is the exact failure the gates exist to
prevent.
Teach and work
Section titled “Teach and work”If you are new and your ask requires the agent to draft artifacts for you — “build me X” — the concierge asks a single plain question before touching your mode:
“Want me to draft the steps and you review each one?”
Answer yes and it switches you to work mode: the agent interviews you once, drafts stages
00 to 05 itself, pauses only for the scope sign-off, and delivers the card set as one
summary. Answer no and you stay in teach mode, the default: you write every planning
artifact and the agent only gate-keeps, catching hollow or fabricated content. It is
forbidden from checking a box or drafting on your behalf.
The gates and done-rules are identical either way. work changes authorship, never the bar.
The choice is stored in a MODE file. You can change your mind later with /flow mode teach
or /flow mode work.
Bypassing the concierge
Section titled “Bypassing the concierge”Type the verb. An explicit /flow next, /flow card, /flow check C-001 is dispatched
exactly as written, with zero concierge interpretation. Typed verbs always win over chat
routing — power users lose nothing by the chat default.
A worked first run
Section titled “A worked first run”- You open a fresh agent in an empty directory and say “tôi muốn build app quản lý kho”.
- The concierge runs status, sees no
flow/directory, and answers: there is no flow project here yet — shall I ask one short question and then draft each step for you to review? - You say yes. It switches to
workmode and starts the interview toward the Scope gate.
Zero flow verbs typed. The consent question was the only ceremony.
Why chat is the front door
Section titled “Why chat is the front door”A harness with twenty-something verbs has a cliff at the start. The person who most needs gating discipline — someone building their first real product — is exactly the person least likely to read a command table first. Every verb they must learn before getting value is a place to give up.
A chat front door is only worth having if it does not become a second, softer source of truth. That is why the loop above starts with a command, not an interpretation, and why permission is default-deny.
A caveat worth knowing
Section titled “A caveat worth knowing”Routing parses human-readable status prose, not a machine token contract. It is reliable on Claude; on other engines such as Codex or Antigravity, treat chat routing as best-effort. If routing ever feels wrong, type the verb — the mechanical layer behaves identically on every engine.