What Are BMad Workflows?

BMad Workflows are skills that guide users through a structured process to produce a specific output. They do most of the heavy lifting in the BMad ecosystem. Focused, composable, and generally stateless.

What Makes a Workflow a Workflow

Like agents, workflows are ultimately skill files. The difference is in emphasis: workflows prioritize getting to an outcome over maintaining a persistent identity.

Trait	Workflow	Agent
Goal	Complete a defined process and produce an artifact	Be an ongoing conversational partner
Persona	Minimal, enough to facilitate a good conversation	Central to the experience
Memory	Generally stateless between sessions	Persistent agent memory
Scope	All steps serve one cohesive purpose	Can span loosely related capabilities

Workflow Types

The BMad Builder classifies workflows into three tiers based on complexity.

Type	Description	Example
Simple Utility	A single-purpose tool that does one thing well	Validate a schema, convert a file format
Simple Workflow	A short guided process with a few sequential steps	Create a quick tech spec
Complex Workflow	A multi-stage process with branching paths, progressive disclosure, and potentially multiple outputs	Create and manage PRDs (covering create, edit, validate, convert, and polish)

Progressive Disclosure

Complex workflows use progressive disclosure to handle multiple operations within a single skill. Rather than building five separate skills for create, edit, validate, convert, and polish, you build one workflow that detects the user’s intent (from how they talk to it or what arguments they pass) and routes internally to the right path.

This is the same pattern that powers BMad’s own multi-capability agents and workflows. It keeps the user’s experience simple while the skill handles routing behind the scenes.

YOLO Mode and Guided Mode

Both the Agent Builder and the Workflow Builder support two interaction styles when creating skills.

Mode	How It Works	Best For
YOLO	You brain-dump your idea; the builder guesses its way to a finished skill, asking only when truly stuck	Quick prototypes, experienced builders
Guided	The builder walks you through decisions, clarifies ambiguities, and ensures nothing is overlooked	Production workflows, first-time builders

Guided mode is no longer the slow multi-step process of earlier BMad versions. It is conversational and adaptive, but produces significantly better results than YOLO for complex workflows.

Headless (Autonomous) Mode

Like agents, workflows can support a Headless Mode. When invoked headless (through a scheduler, orchestrator, or another skill) the workflow skips interactive prompts and completes its process end-to-end without waiting for user input.

When to Build a Workflow vs. an Agent

Choose a Workflow When	Choose an Agent When
The process has a clear start and end	The user will return to it across sessions
No need to remember past interactions	Remembering context adds value
All steps serve one cohesive goal	Capabilities are loosely related
You want a composable building block	You want a persistent conversational partner

Workflows are also excellent as the internal capabilities of an agent. Build the workflow first, then wrap it in an agent if you need persona and memory on top.

Customization Surface

Workflow customization is fully opt-in. If you don’t need users to override anything, don’t ship a customize.toml at all; the workflow runs with hardcoded paths and defaults. If you do opt in, the builder walks you through Configurability Discovery, where you name the scalars (templates, output paths, hooks) you want to expose. Users override them through the three-layer model: your shipped defaults at {skill-root}/customize.toml, team overrides at _bmad/custom/{skill-name}.toml, and personal overrides at _bmad/custom/{skill-name}.user.toml.

See Customization for Authors for the decision guide and How to Make a Skill Customizable for the build-time steps.

Building Workflows

The BMad Workflow Builder (bmad-workflow-builder) uses the same six-phase conversational discovery as the Agent Builder (intent, classification, requirements, drafting, building, and quality optimization) and produces a ready-to-use skill folder.

See the Builder Commands Reference for details on the build process phases and capabilities.