AOF Development Workflow

A practical guide to the fast-feedback loop used by AOF contributors.

Goals

<60s iteration for most changes: edit → targeted test → feedback
Test-gated task completion: no change ships without tests
Trunk-based development: small, focused commits to main

Roles

Role	Responsibility
`swe-architect`	Orchestrates, assigns work, owns checkpoints
`swe-backend`	Implements scheduler/dispatch changes, adds tests (TDD)
`swe-qa`	Runs full and targeted tests, validates state transitions

Sequential work rule: one agent writes to the codebase at a time. Use a simple lock file:

~/Projects/AOF/.agent-lock

Contents: agent=<id> | task=<id> | started=<timestamp>

Remove when done.

Fast Iteration Loop (Target <60s)

From the project root:

Edit code

Run targeted test:

npx vitest run src/path/to/__tests__/my-feature.test.ts

Fix → re-run until green

Optional watch mode:

npx vitest src/path/to/__tests__/my-feature.test.ts --watch

Rule: every behavior change gets a new or updated test first (TDD).

Full Test Gate (Required Before “Done”)

npm test

All tests must be green before moving a task to done/.

QA Handoff

Backend finishes change + targeted tests → moves task to review/ and notifies architect
Architect assigns QA run
QA runs targeted and/or full suite; reports results (pass/fail + repro notes)
Task moves to done/ only after QA sign-off

Smoke Test Checklist (AOF Plugin)

After deploying AOF as an OpenClaw plugin:

Confirm tasks are visible:
Terminal window
```
ls ~/.openclaw/aof/tasks/ready/
```
Verify scheduler events are flowing:
Terminal window
```
tail -n 50 ~/.openclaw/aof/events/events.jsonl
```
Dispatch a smoke-test task and confirm the full lifecycle:
```
ready → in-progress → done
```

If tasks stay in ready with reason: no_executor, the spawnAgent API is unavailable — check plugin configuration.

Checkpoints

Take a checkpoint after:

Completing a risky change
Before a large refactor
After a smoke test passes

CHECKPOINT="checkpoint-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)-description"
mkdir -p ~/backups/$CHECKPOINT

# Save OpenClaw state
tar czf ~/backups/$CHECKPOINT/openclaw-state.tar.gz \
  --exclude='.openclaw/sessions' \
  --exclude='.openclaw/cache' \
  --exclude='.openclaw/logs' \
  -C ~ .openclaw/

# Save AOF project
tar czf ~/backups/$CHECKPOINT/AOF.tar.gz -C ~/Projects AOF

echo "$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) - $CHECKPOINT" >> ~/backups/CHECKPOINT-LOG.txt

Rollback

bash ~/backups/restore.sh ~/backups/<checkpoint-name>

Validate with:

cd ~/Projects/AOF && npm test

Ground Rules

No parallel agents writing to the same workspace
Tests gate task completion — no exceptions
Checkpoints are required at milestones
Keep commits small and descriptive (see CONTRIBUTING.md)