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Phases

Phases organize project work into logical stages, providing structure and progress tracking.

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The Five Phases

CLEO uses a five-phase workflow structure:

Setup

Foundation and planning - project initialization, architecture decisions, environment setup

Core

Main development - feature implementation, primary functionality

Testing

Validation - unit tests, integration tests, QA review

Polish

Refinement - documentation, edge cases, performance tuning

Maintenance

Ongoing support - bug fixes, updates, long-term maintenance

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Phase Progress

View phase progress across your project: 
cleo phases
Output: 
Phase         Progress    Tasks
────────────────────────────────
setup         ████████░░  80%  (4/5)
core          ██████░░░░  60%  (6/10)
testing       ████░░░░░░  40%  (4/10)
polish        ░░░░░░░░░░  0%   (0/5)
maintenance   ░░░░░░░░░░  0%   (0/2)

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Assigning Phases

cleo add "Implement login" --phase core --priority high

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Project Phase Context

Set the current project phase to provide context for your session: 
# Set current phase
cleo phase set testing

# Show current phase
cleo phase show

# View phase history
cleo phase history
The project phase provides context but doesn’t restrict which tasks you can work on. Cross-phase work is allowed when intentional.

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Phase Discipline

When working with phases, follow these guidelines:

Same Phase Preferred

Focus on current phase tasks for clarity and momentum

Intentional Cross-Phase

Document rationale when working across phases

Phase Completion

Understand what triggers phase advancement

Context Preservation

Maintain phase relationships during reorganization

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Phase-Aware Session Scoping

Sessions can be scoped to specific phases: 
# Work only on testing phase of epic T001
cleo session start --scope epicPhase --root T001 --phase testing
This restricts your session’s scope to tasks matching both the epic and phase criteria.

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Phase Transition Patterns

Maintenance phase can feed back into Core or Testing as bugs are discovered and fixed.

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Phase Statistics

Get detailed phase analytics: 
cleo phases stats
Includes:
  • Tasks per phase
  • Completion rates
  • Average cycle time per phase
  • Blocked tasks per phase

Commands: phase

Project phase management

Commands: phases

Phase listing and statistics