fix(cli): answer workflow verbs typed at the CLI

[clay-good]

Status

LGTM. Closes #1221

What was missing

Workflows run inside the AI assistant, but users and agents say and type openspec propose — it is the natural way to name the thing. All they got back was:

error: unknown command 'propose'

That taught them nothing, and it is worse than nothing for an agent: the reporter of #1221 watched their assistant read that failure as an invitation to hand-build the artifacts with openspec new change plus manual file writes, bypassing the workflow's template flow entirely, repeatedly, across sessions. Nothing OpenSpec generates maps the natural verb to the actual invocation.

What it does

Registers the workflow verbs as hidden commands whose only job is to answer the question, grounded in what this project actually has:

$ openspec propose
✖ Error: 'propose' is an OpenSpec workflow, not a CLI command. Workflows run inside your AI assistant.
Fix: run /opsx:propose in your assistant.

Three branches, in order of what the user can act on:

Situation	Answer
No OpenSpec tools detected	Fix: run 'openspec init' to install the workflows, then invoke /opsx:propose in your assistant.
Workflow not installed for the profile	The verify workflow is not installed in this project. + Fix: run 'openspec config profile' to add it, then run /opsx:verify in your assistant.
Installed	The invocation each detected tool answers to

When the project's tools spell it differently, each line is labeled:

Fix: use it in your assistant:
  /opsx:explore (Claude Code)
  /opsx-explore (GitHub Copilot)

The spelling comes from the tool and the delivery mode, never from whether the workflow happens to be installed — so the installed and not-installed branches cannot disagree about how one tool spells one workflow. It is also not a new list: resolveWorkflowReference() is extracted from the logic init already used for its getting-started hints — commands when the tool gets command files (/opsx:x, /opsx-x, Amazon Q's @opsx-x), its documented skill invocation otherwise (/openspec-x, Kimi's /skill:, Codex's $) — and init now calls that resolver instead of its own copy. A tool with no slash surface (Rovo Dev, SourceCraft) gets a request rather than a command: Fix: ask Rovo Dev CLI to use the openspec-explore skill.

Every entry point answers, including the help paths: openspec explore --help and -h reach the guidance instead of a usage page for a command that does nothing, and openspec help explore — an explicit request for help — answers on stdout and exits 0.

Nothing else changes. new, update, and archive are real CLI commands and keep winning their names. A genuinely unknown command still gets commander's unknown command. The verbs are hidden, so --help and shell completions are unchanged. The action sets process.exitCode rather than calling process.exit(), so the postAction hook still runs and the guidance cannot be truncated on a pipe.

Proof it works

test/core/workflow-verbs.test.ts (13 tests) covers all three branches, both multi-tool labelings, each spelling family (namespaced, filename-flat, Amazon Q's @, skills-only /openspec-*, natural language), the mixed slash + natural-language list, and the commands-only-delivery-with-a-skills-only-tool fallback. test/cli-e2e/basic.test.ts drives the real binary for the verb, all three help paths, top-level help, and a companion asserting openspec definitely-not-a-command still reports unknown command.

Both guards were proven to fail first, not just to pass:

• Reserving propose — a name the CLI does not own — makes the reachability test report expected [ 'propose' ] to deeply equal []. (A verb colliding with a real command cannot even ship: commander throws at registration.)
• Dropping { hidden: true } makes the help-listing test report expected ... not to match /^\s{2,}propose(\s|$)/m.

Local suite: 4,437 tests. The failures left are the sandbox's, not the branch's — chmod+exec and tool-directory writes are blocked here. Running the four affected files against a clean origin/main checkout side by side: main 12 failed / 178 passed, this branch 11 failed / 179 passed, same 190 tests. tsc --noEmit and npm run lint clean. CI is the authority on the real runners.

Notes / nits

• Agent discovery: map natural-language "openspec <verb>" to /opsx:<verb> at init/update time #1221 also floats injecting a static verb→command mapping into the generated instruction files. This does the same job at the moment the agent needs it, with per-project accuracy static text cannot have (which tools are configured, which delivery mode, whether the workflow is even installed), and without touching every generated skill and its parity hashes. Happy to add the static mapping too if you want belt and braces.
• The "not installed" branch also answers the recurring confusion in /opsx:* commands not visible in Claude Code 2.1.119 slash menu (subdirectory commands incompatible with new commands→skills merge) #1076, where users expect every /opsx:* command after init and are not told about openspec config profile.
• --json is not special-cased: the guidance goes to stderr with exit 1 and stdout stays empty, rather than inventing an undocumented payload shape for an error path.
• Detection is wrapped so an unreadable project directory degrades to the generic guidance rather than a stack trace on what is already an error path.
• Both CodeRabbit findings are addressed in 85624b8 (tool-accurate spelling in the not-installed branch; docs sentence now states what the output actually depends on).

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Workflow names entered as CLI commands now provide clear guidance instead of an unhelpful “unknown command” error.
  • Guidance identifies the correct invocation for configured AI tools or directs users to initialize OpenSpec or select a profile.
  • Help requests for workflow names show the same guidance.
  • Unrecognized commands and existing CLI commands continue to behave as before.

• Documentation

  • Clarified that workflow names are run through the configured AI assistant rather than directly as CLI commands.

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📒 Files selected for processing (5)

• docs/cli.md
• src/cli/index.ts
• src/core/workflow-verbs.ts
• test/cli-e2e/basic.test.ts
• test/core/workflow-verbs.test.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Changes

Workflow verb guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Workflow reference resolution src/core/command-surface.ts, src/core/init.ts	Adds shared resolution for command-based and skill-based workflow references. Initialization hints now use this helper.
Workflow guidance generation src/core/workflow-verbs.ts, test/core/workflow-verbs.test.ts	Adds tool detection, workflow installation checks, tool-specific invocation formatting, setup guidance, and error handling.
CLI routing and validation src/cli/index.ts, test/cli-e2e/basic.test.ts	Registers workflow verbs as hidden commands that print guidance. Tests cover help handling, top-level help output, and preservation of genuine unknown-command behavior.
Documentation and release metadata docs/cli.md, .changeset/workflow-verbs-at-the-cli.md	Documents workflow guidance and records a patch release for the package.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 85624

Workflow verb invocations now provide assistant-specific guidance while preserving existing commands, unknown-command behavior, help visibility, and completions. No merge-blocking risk remains.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant User
  participant CLI
  participant Guidance
  participant ProjectTools
  User->>CLI: Enter openspec propose
  CLI->>Guidance: Request propose guidance
  Guidance->>ProjectTools: Detect tools and installed workflows
  ProjectTools-->>Guidance: Return tool and workflow state
  Guidance-->>CLI: Return invocation details
  CLI-->>User: Print assistant invocation guidance

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Suggested reviewers: tabishb, showms

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3 | ❌ 2

❌ Failed checks (2 warnings)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Linked Issues check	⚠️ Warning	The PR improves workflow discovery when users type CLI verbs, but issue #1221 specifically requires injecting verb-to-assistant-command mappings into generated instruction files during init or update.…	Update init/update-generated instruction files to include mappings such as "openspec explore" to "/opsx:explore", or revise the linked issue scope to explicitly accept CLI-time guidance as the intended implementation.
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 42.86% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 14 functions across 6 files. (1 skipped: …	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	The CLI guidance, resolver extraction, documentation, changeset, and related tests all support the workflow discovery objective. No unrelated code changes are evident.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: providing guidance when users type workflow verbs at the CLI.

Full details: Linked Issues check

Explanation

The PR improves workflow discovery when users type CLI verbs, but issue #1221 specifically requires injecting verb-to-assistant-command mappings into generated instruction files during init or update. The PR does not modify that generation path.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 42.86% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 14 functions across 6 files. (1 skipped: 1 unsupported.)

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Actionable comments posted: 2

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Inline comments:
In `@docs/cli.md`:
- Line 5: Update the workflow guidance sentence to document that output depends
on detected tools, delivery mode, and installation status: supported tools may
produce slash-style, @, $, skill-style, or natural-language invocations, while
missing tools or workflows may direct users to openspec init or openspec config
profile.

In `@src/core/workflow-verbs.ts`:
- Line 119: Update the missing-workflow guidance in the profile configuration
flow to resolve the command reference according to the selected delivery mode,
using the skills-specific reference for skills-only delivery and the existing
canonical command otherwise. Format multiple tool-specific references
consistently with the installed-workflow branch, and add a regression test
covering Claude with skills-only delivery and a missing workflow.

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