Quick Flow

Skip the ceremony. Quick Flow takes you from idea to working code in two skills - no Product Brief, no PRD, no Architecture doc.

Want a Unified Variant?

If you want one workflow to clarify, plan, implement, review, and present in a single run, see Quick Dev New Preview.

When to Use It

• Bug fixes and patches
• Refactoring existing code
• Small, well-understood features
• Prototyping and spikes
• Single-agent work where one developer can hold the full scope

When NOT to Use It

• New products or platforms that need stakeholder alignment
• Major features spanning multiple components or teams
• Work that requires architectural decisions (database schema, API contracts, service boundaries)
• Anything where requirements are unclear or contested

Scope Creep

If you start a Quick Flow and realize the scope is bigger than expected, bmad-quick-dev will detect this and offer to escalate. You can switch to a full PRD workflow at any point without losing your work.

How It Works

Quick Flow has two skills, each backed by a structured workflow. You can run them together or independently.

quick-spec: Plan

Run bmad-quick-spec and Barry (the Quick Flow agent) walks you through a conversational discovery process:

1. Understand - You describe what you want to build. Barry scans the codebase to ask informed questions, then captures a problem statement, solution approach, and scope boundaries.
2. Investigate - Barry reads relevant files, maps code patterns, identifies files to modify, and documents the technical context.
3. Generate - Produces a complete tech-spec with ordered implementation tasks (specific file paths and actions), acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then format, testing strategy, and dependencies.
4. Review - Presents the full spec for your sign-off. You can edit, ask questions, run adversarial review, or refine with advanced elicitation before finalizing.

The output is a tech-spec-{slug}.md file saved to your project’s implementation artifacts folder. It contains everything a fresh agent needs to implement the feature - no conversation history required.

quick-dev: Build

Run bmad-quick-dev and Barry implements the work. It operates in two modes:

• Tech-spec mode - Point it at a spec file (quick-dev tech-spec-auth.md) and it executes every task in order, writes tests, and verifies acceptance criteria.
• Direct mode - Give it instructions directly (quick-dev "refactor the auth middleware") and it gathers context, builds a mental plan, and executes.

After implementation, bmad-quick-dev runs a self-check audit against all tasks and acceptance criteria, then triggers an adversarial code review of the diff. Findings are presented for you to resolve before wrapping up.

Fresh Context

For best results, run bmad-quick-dev in a new conversation after finishing bmad-quick-spec. This gives the implementation agent clean context focused solely on building.

What Quick Flow Skips

The full BMad Method produces a Product Brief, PRD, Architecture doc, and Epic/Story breakdown before any code is written. Quick Flow replaces all of that with a single tech-spec. This works because Quick Flow targets changes where:

• The product direction is already established
• Architecture decisions are already made
• A single developer can reason about the full scope
• Requirements fit in one conversation

Escalating to Full BMad Method

Quick Flow includes built-in guardrails for scope detection. When you run bmad-quick-dev with a direct request, it evaluates signals like multi-component mentions, system-level language, and uncertainty about approach. If it detects the work is bigger than a quick flow:

• Light escalation - Recommends running bmad-quick-spec first to create a plan
• Heavy escalation - Recommends switching to the full BMad Method PRD process

You can also escalate manually at any time. Your tech-spec work carries forward - it becomes input for the broader planning process rather than being discarded.