Bmad Help

BMAD Help — Orchestration Spine

A lean router. It answers one question: what do I run next? It detects planning

state, infers the phase and track, and points to the next skill. It is auto-invoked to

orient a session and replaces a heavyweight master/orchestrator agent.

This skill produces NO planning documents. It reads state and recommends. All

artifacts are produced by the specialized planning skills it routes to.

When to use

• User asks "what's next", "where am I", "what's my status", "continue", "resume".
• Start of any BMAD session, to orient before doing planning work.
• User is unsure which skill to invoke.

Phase Map

Analysis  ──►  Planning  ──►  Solutioning  ──►  Implementation-handoff
(optional)     (required)     (conditional)     (required: ready-for-dev stories)

| Phase | Artifact(s) | Skill |

|-------|-------------|-------|

| Analysis (optional) | product-brief, research, brainstorm | bmad-product-brief / bmad-research / bmad-brainstorm |

| Planning (required) | prd.md OR tech-spec.md, epics.md | bmad-prd / bmad-tech-spec / bmad-epics-and-stories |

| Planning — UX (only if UI) | ux-design.md | bmad-ux |

| Solutioning (track-dependent) | architecture.md | bmad-architecture |

| Implementation-handoff (required) | {epic}.{story}.{slug}.story.md (ready-for-dev) | bmad-epics-and-stories → bmad-sprint-planning |

Threaded across every phase: project-context.md (the project "constitution") and

decision-log.md (decisions carried between workflows). If these are missing, the

first recommendation is always to establish them.

> Implementation itself (writing code, running tests) is OUT OF SCOPE. The last artifact

> this plugin produces is a ready-for-dev story file or handoff manifest, passed to an

> external dev tool.

Tracks (scale-adaptive — never numbered levels)

A heuristic may suggest a track from story count; the user confirms.

| Track | Scope | Required planning | Optional |

|-------|-------|-------------------|----------|

| Quick Flow | 1–15 stories | tech-spec + stories | analysis, ux |

| BMad Method | 10–50+ stories | prd + architecture + epics + stories | analysis; ux (if UI) |

| Enterprise | 30+ stories | prd + architecture + security + devops + epics + stories | analysis |

Per-track required vs optional steps in detail: see

REFERENCE.md.

How it works

• Detect state. Run the detector to list which artifacts exist and the inferred

phase:

   bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-help/scripts/detect-state.sh [output-folder]

Default output folder is bmad-output/. It prints a checklist of artifacts (present

or missing), the detected track (from decision-log if recorded), and the inferred

phase.

• Recommend next. Map the detected state to the next skill:

   bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-help/scripts/recommend-next.sh [output-folder]

It prints the single next skill to run, plus why, plus any skipped optional phases.

• Present the recommendation to the user in plain prose. Offer to invoke the

recommended skill. Do not auto-run planning skills without confirmation when the

track is still ambiguous.

If project-context.md does not exist yet, treat the project as un-initialized: the

recommendation is to start with bmad-init (or bmad-product-brief if the user wants the

optional Analysis phase first) to establish project context and choose a track.

Routing logic (summary)

Evaluate in order; recommend the first unmet step for the active track.

• No project-context.md → establish project context (run bmad-init, or

bmad-product-brief if the user opts into Analysis). Confirm the track.

• No prd.md and no tech-spec.md →
• Quick Flow → bmad-tech-spec (tech-spec).
• BMad Method / Enterprise → bmad-prd (PRD).
• Project has a UI and no ux-design.md (BMad/Enterprise) → bmad-ux.
• Track needs architecture and no architecture.md (BMad/Enterprise) →

bmad-architecture. (Quick Flow skips architecture.)

• Enterprise and no security/devops planning → bmad-architecture (security + devops

sections / handoff).

• No epics.md (BMad/Enterprise) → bmad-epics-and-stories (epic breakdown).
• No story files under stories/ → bmad-epics-and-stories (create ready-for-dev stories).
• Stories exist but some are still backlog/not ready-for-dev → bmad-epics-and-stories

(finish compiling story context objects); then bmad-sprint-planning to sequence waves.

• All required artifacts present and stories are ready-for-dev → **handoff

complete.** Recommend handing the stories to the external dev tool. Nothing left to

plan.

Skipping rules: Analysis is always optional — never block on it. UX is recommended

only when the project has a UI. Architecture is skipped for Quick Flow.

Full decision table with edge cases: REFERENCE.md.

Notes for Claude

• This is the entry point. Always detect state before recommending.
• Recommend exactly ONE next skill. Keep it actionable.
• Never produce planning documents here — route to the owning skill.
• Never recommend running tests, builds, linters, or writing code — that is out of

scope for this plugin entirely.

• Respect locked sections: Acceptance Criteria, Dev Notes, and Testing in story files

are owned by planning skills and must not be edited downstream.

• Use decision-log.md to read the confirmed track; if absent, ask the user to confirm

the track before recommending track-specific steps.

> ---

> Part of the BMAD Planning & Orchestrator plugin — a Claude Code harness for the BMAD Method by the BMAD Code Organization (https://github.com/bmad-code-org/BMAD-METHOD). Implements the spirit of bmad-help. All methodology credit belongs to the BMAD Code Organization.