The typical ttal workflow follows three phases: research the problem, design the solution, then execute the implementation. Each phase produces artifacts that flow automatically to the next.

The pipeline

1. Research

ttal go <uuid>

The research agent investigates the problem, explores options, and writes a findings document. It then annotates the task:

Research: ~/clawd/docs/research/2026-03-01-auth-options.md

2. Design

ttal go <uuid>

The design agent reads the task (including the research findings via the annotation), writes an implementation plan, and annotates the task:

Plan: ~/clawd/docs/plans/2026-03-01-auth-implementation.md

3. Execute

ttal go <uuid>

This spawns a worker in a tmux session with a git worktree. The worker receives the full task context — including the research findings and implementation plan, automatically inlined from annotations.

Automatic context flow

The key feature: ttal task get inlines all annotation paths.

When a task has annotations like:

Plan: ~/clawd/docs/plans/auth-implementation.md
Research: ~/clawd/docs/research/auth-options.md

The worker's prompt automatically includes the full content of those files. No manual copy-paste — context flows from research → design → worker automatically.

Example: Adding authentication

Step 1: Create the task

ttal task add --project myapp "Add JWT authentication to the API"

Step 2: Research

ttal go <uuid>

Athena (the research agent) investigates JWT libraries, compares options, and writes findings.

Step 3: Design

ttal go <uuid>

Inke (the design agent) reads Athena's research, writes an implementation plan with specific files to modify, and annotates the task.

Step 4: Execute

ttal go <uuid>

A worker spawns with full context: the task description, Athena's research, and Inke's plan — all inlined in the prompt. The worker follows the plan, implements the feature, creates a PR.

Step 5: Review and merge

The PR goes through automated review (6 specialized review agents), the worker triages feedback, and you merge from Telegram.

When to skip phases

Not every task needs all three phases:

• Simple bug fix — skip research and design, go straight to ttal go
• Well-understood feature — skip research, go straight to design stage with ttal go <uuid>, then execute
• Exploratory work — research only, then decide next steps based on findings