Pipeline templates

A template preconfigures the pipeline for a kind of work — which stages run, how the agents are tuned, the governance rules, and the retry limits. You pick one when you launch a run (the Run Pipeline launcher has a template dropdown); feature is the sensible default.

worca ships with these built-in templates:

Template	What it’s for
feature	Substantial new work. Full pipeline with Plan Review and Learn enabled, higher retry limits, and all approval gates active.
feature-fast	Same coverage as feature (Plan Review + Learn, full pipeline), but Plan Review runs in review_and_edit mode — the plan reviewer can edit the plan directly instead of looping back to the Planner, trimming one Opus cold-start per revision.
feature-minor	A well-scoped feature a planner can handle confidently. Full implement/test/review/PR, but no Plan Review, no Learn, and no approval gates — runs autonomously. Lower retry limits and effort capped at high.
bugfix	A focused fix. The planner investigates the root cause, the coordinator creates tight tasks, the implementer fixes it.
quick-fix	Trivial changes. Plan and implement only — no test, review, or PR; the change is left on the branch for you to commit.
refactor	Behavior-preserving change. The reviewer enforces that behavior doesn’t change, a PR is opened for human review, and Learn captures invariants surfaced along the way.
investigate	Analysis only. The planner explores and produces a report; the guardian publishes it to docs/plans/ and opens a PR — no code changes.
test-only	Add test coverage without touching production code. Analyze the gaps, create per-module test tasks, write tests only.

Which stages each template runs

A template’s main effect is the set of stages it enables. This matrix shows what runs where (Preflight always runs and is omitted):

Stage	feature	feature-fast	feature-minor	bugfix	quick-fix	refactor	investigate	test-only
Plan	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Plan Review	✓	✓	—	—	—	✓	✓	✓
Coordinate	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	—	✓
Implement	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	—	✓
Test	✓	✓	✓	✓	—	✓	—	✓
Review	✓	✓	✓	✓	—	✓	—	✓
PR	✓	✓	✓	✓	—	✓	✓	✓
Learn	✓	✓	—	—	—	✓	—	—

feature and refactor run the same stages — they differ in tuning, not stage set: refactor puts every agent on Opus and has the Reviewer enforce behavior preservation. feature-fast shares the same stage set as feature but puts Plan Review in review_and_edit mode so the reviewer rewrites the plan in place rather than looping back. feature-minor runs the same stages as bugfix (full implement→test→review→PR, no Plan Review or Learn) but is framed for well-scoped features rather than fixes, caps effort at high, uses lower retry limits, and disables the plan-approval gate so it runs unattended. quick-fix stops after Implement, leaving the change on the branch for you to commit. investigate skips coding entirely and uses the PR stage to publish its report.

Pinning a default template

You can pin a template as the project default by setting worca.default_template in settings.json — every run then uses that template unless --template overrides at launch. worca init --upgrade does this automatically for existing projects that have customized template-owned settings: it captures those values into an auto-generated _legacy-settings template and pins it, so behavior carries forward without you choosing a template every time. See Configuration precedence for the full strip-and-merge story when a template is in play.

Authoring your own

You can also author templates for project- or user-specific workflows — see Authoring templates.