Dev Studio pack: six personas and 38 workflows

Dev Studio gives you a full software team as written procedures. Six personas, each with a role, run 38 named workflows across five phases: analysis, planning, architecture, implementation and utilities. You name the persona or the workflow, and your AI coding tool reads the instructions and carries them out with its own tools. It is the pack to pick when you want a specific, repeatable procedure (validate a PRD, write an architecture, investigate a failure) rather than a free-form conversation.

When to use it#

• You want a named procedure with a defined input and a documented expected result, run the same way every time.
• You already use Core and want finer-grained roles: for example a dedicated UX designer (Rachel) or a technical writer (Huldah).
• A narrow fix does not need the whole pipeline: the orchestrator picks the smallest workflow that produces the result you asked for.

What is installed#

Dev Studio is a packaged pack in .agents/skills/pack-dev-studio/, plus the dispatcher skill dev-studio in .agents/skills/dev-studio/. The pack holds the orchestrator dev-studio-orchestrator.md, the machine-readable shared/catalog.json (personas, workflows, aliases, input kinds, required resources), the execution guide shared/execution.md, a README and categories/ with one Markdown file per persona and workflow. Every workflow answers to at least three names: <id>, bmad-<id> and bmad-plus-<id>, so bmad-plus-validate-prd and validate-prd reach the same procedure.

The six personas#

A persona is a set of instructions, not a running process. Choose the role you need for the task; Core’s Atlas, Forge, Sentinel and Nexus can coexist with these six.

The 38 workflows by phase#

The Input column tells what a workflow needs. A request workflow needs your request or a file. An artifact workflow needs at least one existing file, for example the PRD to validate. A project workflow needs a request or a file and works on the project. The bmad-help workflow needs nothing. Missing context is reported as needing input rather than guessed.

Analysis (6)#

Planning (5)#

Architecture (4)#

Implementation (11)#

Utilities (12)#

Quick start#

1. 01

   Install the pack

   Core is added automatically; naming it as well is harmless. Only Node.js 20 is needed.

   In your project terminal

   npx bmad-plus install --packs core,dev-studio

2. 02

   Ask a persona to run a workflow

   Name the persona and the workflow id.

   In your project terminal

   Miriam, use product-brief to define a small issue triage tool for our support team.

3. 03

   Optionally list the catalogue from the terminal

   The CLI lists every workflow with its persona and input kind and changes nothing.

   In your project terminal

   npx bmad-plus studio list --json

Copyable examples#

Miriam, use product-brief to define an inspection checklist app for our field technicians. They often work in basements with no network, so say what that implies for the first scope.

Huldah, run document-project on this repo. Document only what you can ground in files you actually opened, and list what you could not verify.

Yosef, validate-prd on docs/prd.md.

Rachel, create-ux-design for the onboarding of new users: from account creation to their first saved invoice. Cover empty, error and offline states.

Bezalel, design the architecture for the appointment-booking app described in docs/prd.md. Record each decision with its alternatives and trade-offs.

Oholiab, use investigate to reproduce the failing import described in docs/issue.md.

npx bmad-plus studio prepare validate-prd --input docs/prd.md --json

Miriam, run bmad-help: I have a half-written PRD and a deadline. Which Dev Studio workflows should I run, in which order, and which can I skip?

What it writes and where#

Reports default to _bmad-output/dev-studio/<workflow-id>.md, adjusted to the configured output folder. Code changes stay in the real project. A report records scope, inputs, decisions, completed work, checks, open questions and the next action. On resume the workflow reads the previous report and revalidates inputs that changed. A report is never permission to overwrite your changes or to repeat a publication.

user_name: user
communication_language: English
document_output_language: English
output_folder: _bmad-output
project_name: demo-app

A missing file is valid. A malformed file, or an invalid known field, is an error. project_name defaults to the folder name. Your current request and your host’s instructions take precedence over language preferences in the configuration.

Data flows and prerequisites#

Node.js 20 for the installer and the optional studio command. No Python, no key, and no flow of its own that leaves your machine: studio list and studio prepare read local files only. What your assistant sends to its model is up to your host tool. Research workflows need accessible sources to support current factual claims, and say so when they have none.

Limits and gotchas#