Built-in workflows reference

What you'll learn: the exact set of packaged orch:: workflows, how the orch:: name resolves, and the rules governing their input and behavior.

orch ships a fixed set of built-in workflows that run without a .orch/workflows/ file or an orch.config.ts entry. They are invoked by an orch:: prefix and run in place from orch's own source — read-only, never copied into your project. For the narrative walkthrough, see the Built-in workflows guide.

Variants

Name	Runner	Posture
orch::work-cc	claude	bare: false, --dangerously-skip-permissions — implements unattended without per-action prompts.
orch::work-codex	codex	sandbox: 'full-auto' — workspace write with auto-approval (Codex's unattended-write posture; there is no skip-permissions flag).

Both are the same phased-build pipeline parameterized by runner; only the bound agent differs.

Invocation

orch run orch::work-cc <plan-file-or-description>
orch run orch::work-codex <plan-file-or-description>

• The orch:: prefix bypasses your orch.config.ts workflows map entirely and resolves the name against orch's source tree. A name without the prefix resolves through your config exactly as before.
• An unknown built-in name (e.g. orch::nope) errors and lists the available built-ins.
• A .orch/ must exist in the project (run orch init); a missing one surfaces the same config error as any other run.

Input resolution

The single positional argument becomes the plan text:

Argument	Treated as
Path to an existing, readable file	The file's contents (the plan).
Anything else (inline text, missing path, a directory)	The argument string itself (an inline description).

Relative paths resolve against the run's working directory (the active worktree if one is entered, otherwise the project directory). An empty or missing argument is a usage error before any agent runs.

Behavior

1. Decide phases — an interactive autoStop agent step decides a 1–4 phase breakdown (biased toward fewer; >4 is allowed for exceptional complexity but warned, never truncated) and writes it to .orch/phased-build-phases.md.
2. Parse + validate — orch reads that artifact back and parses it into an ordered phase list. The run halts with a clear error if the artifact is empty or has no well-formed phase (each phase requires a non-empty title; a description is optional). The artifact is emptied before the decide step, so a decide that writes nothing halts here instead of reusing a previous run's phases.
3. Implement loop — one interactive autoStop step per phase implements that phase only. Each phase records a status sentinel; a missing or non-success status halts the run before the next phase.

Constraints

• Implement-only. No commits and no project validation (tests/typecheck) are ever run — you own both.
• Read-only / run-in-place. There is no eject or edit step; to customize, author your own workflow (Writing a workflow).
• Every agent step is interactive + autoStop. There is no autonomous agent step; runs complete with no per-phase keystrokes.

Where to go next

• Built-in workflows guide — the walkthrough with examples.
• CLI reference — orch run and every other command.
• Runners — the claude and codex options the variants bind.