“Multi-agent workflow” is one of those phrases that makes people immediately spin up six model calls and a prompt-chaining nightmare. Phase 12 of kodr does the opposite: it sketches the whole staged workflow as deterministic local data, with zero new model calls. Draw the org chart first, hire later.
The stages
The workflow names seven roles:
- Planner
- Coder
- Senior Reviewer
- Writer
- Tester
- Documenter
- Reporter
Right now none of those are LLM calls. They are stages with an order and a contract. The point of this phase is to get the shape of the coordination - and one rule in particular - testable before any of it costs a token.
Batch-aware review
The rule worth the phase: the Senior Reviewer sees the plan and every proposed path, then rejects any proposal that touches a path the plan did not call for.
This sounds obvious until you notice how most review gets done - one file at a time. Coding proposals are almost never one file. A model asked to “add a config option” might also, helpfully, rewrite an unrelated module it happened to read. Review a single file in isolation and that surprise sails straight through. The reviewer has to see the whole planned batch at once to catch a path that should not be there.
So the reviewer’s contract is: here is the plan, here are all the paths this proposal wants to touch, approve only if they line up. The tests cover both sides - an approved proposal where paths match the plan, and a rejection where a proposal reaches for an unplanned path.
Why model it deterministically first
Same instinct as every phase before it. Before adding the expensive, non-deterministic part (actual model calls per stage), I want a testable contract for stage order and reviewer behaviour. If the coordination logic is wrong, I want a fast unit test to tell me - not a flaky run against a 7B model where I cannot tell whether the harness or the model made the bad call.
Get the skeleton deterministic and proven. Bolt the models on once the bones are trustworthy.
Links:
- Phase doc: phases/12-workflow-mode.md
- Kodr post: blog/12-workflow-mode.md
- The workflow: src/workflow.mjs