The dials

/flow ships with sane defaults. Out of the box, it already runs the loop the way it's meant to: safe, sequential, and asking before anything risky. You don't need to touch anything on this page to use /flow.

Come here when you want to change one specific thing, like turning on the autonomous loop or getting pinged when a question is waiting on you. Every dial below is a real, working setting: nothing here is a wish-list item.

Quick win: turn on the autonomous loop

By default, /flow only runs when you type a command. To let it work on its own schedule (a "tick" that claims one ready item and carries it forward), flip one flag.

Open .dork/plugins/flow/skills/flow-drain/SKILL.md and find the frontmatter block at the top:

---
# before
enabled: false
cron: '0 * * * *'
---

Change enabled to true:

---
# after
enabled: true
cron: '0 * * * *'
---

Everything past this point is reference material: the full list of dials, grouped by what they control. Skim the headings and stop wherever you've found what you needed.

Reference

Where the dials live

Almost every setting lives in one file. The autonomous schedule is the one exception:

That schema file isn't just documentation: it's enforced. If you type a value that isn't on the allowed list, or set a number below the floor /flow requires, the file fails to load instead of quietly misbehaving. Most code editors also read the schema reference at the top of config.json and give you autocomplete and inline errors as you type, the same way editors validate a package.json.

Cadence: the Pulse schedule

Autonomous mode runs on DorkOS Pulse, a file-based scheduler. Its timing lives in the frontmatter of .dork/plugins/flow/skills/flow-drain/SKILL.md, not in config.json:

Autonomy

How aggressively the engine takes work on its own, under autonomy in config.json:

Eligibility

Dispatch (the step that hands an item to the engine) only ever picks up work that's genuinely ready. Readiness is marked by the agent/ready label, applied at these stages:

agent/ready is a label on an item in your tracker, not a setting in config.json: the shaping stages produce it, you don't set it directly. What you can tune is how the ready items get ordered, under dispatch:

Dispatch also skips anything not actually dispatchable: items with open blockers, items in a finished or canceled project, items already at the WIP cap, and items your ownership settings don't allow it to touch. agent/ready is the dial you feed; everything else is a safety check.

Involvement

When the engine asks you first versus just proceeds, under involvement:

The comms setting is the one that shapes tone day to day. The engine reads where a request came from (you, live in a /flow session, versus an unattended tick) and checks it against the calibration rules above. That's why IDEATE tends to ask a lot and EXECUTE tends to just proceed: it's one rule reacting to context, not a separate switch per stage.

The nudge settings are the only way to get pinged outside your tracker. If you're the only person on the account (the common setup), a parked question otherwise shows up only as a tracker comment and an agent/needs-input label, easy to miss. Turning on nudge.relay or nudge.telegram adds a real notification so a stuck question doesn't sit there unnoticed.

Gates

The checkpoints between stages, under gates:

Loops

/flow runs on a small set of internal jobs called reconcilers, one per loop. Each takes the same three dials, under loops.<id>:

• enabled: whether this loop runs at all.
• priority: lower numbers run earlier in a tick and win if two loops want the same item at once.
• intervalMs: how often the scheduler considers this loop due to run (in milliseconds).

The order isn't arbitrary: recovery goes first because losing in-flight work is the one mistake nobody forgives. Inbox comes next because a person waiting on a reply is the cheapest thing to unblock. Review and dispatch follow, and triage and hygiene bring up the rear as slow background chores. Want replies to resume faster? Lower loops.inbox.intervalMs. Want fewer tracker reads? Raise it.

Ingestion

How updates from your tracker reach the engine, under ingestion:

Which dial should I touch?

Next steps