bmad-autonomous-development/docs/index.md

BAD — BMad Autonomous Development

🤖 Autonomous development orchestrator for the BMad Method. Runs fully autonomous parallel multi-agent pipelines through the full story lifecycle (create → dev → review → PR) driven by your sprint backlog and dependency graph.

Overview

BAD is a BMad Method module that automates your entire sprint execution. A lightweight coordinator orchestrates the pipeline — it never reads files or writes code itself. Every unit of work is delegated to a dedicated subagent with a fresh context window, keeping each agent fully focused on its single task.

Requirements

• BMad Method installed in your project npx bmad-method install --modules bmm,tea
• A sprint plan with epics, stories, and sprint-status.yaml
• Git + GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated:
  1. brew install gh
  2. gh auth login
  3. Add to your .zshrc so BAD's subagents can connect to GitHub:

     export GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN=$(gh auth token)
     

  4. If running Claude Code with sandbox mode, allow gh to reach GitHub's API — add to .claude/settings.json:

     {
       "sandbox": {
         ...
         "enableWeakerNetworkIsolation": true
       }
     }
     

Installation

npx skills add https://github.com/stephenleo/bmad-autonomous-development

Then run setup in your project:

/bad setup

Usage

BAD spawns subagents for every step of the pipeline. For the full autonomous experience — no permission prompts — start Claude Code with:

claude --dangerously-skip-permissions

Then run:

/bad

BAD can also be triggered naturally: "run BAD", "kick off the sprint", "automate the sprint", "start autonomous development", "run the pipeline", "start the dev pipeline"

Run with optional runtime overrides:

/bad MAX_PARALLEL_STORIES=2 AUTO_PR_MERGE=true MODEL_STANDARD=opus

Pipeline

Once your epics and stories are planned, BAD takes over:

1. (MODEL_STANDARD subagent) Builds a dependency graph from your sprint backlog — maps story dependencies, syncs GitHub PR status, and identifies what's ready to work on
2. Picks ready stories from the graph, respecting epic ordering and dependencies
3. Runs up to MAX_PARALLEL_STORIES stories simultaneously — each in its own isolated git worktree — each through a sequential 5-step pipeline. Every step runs in a dedicated subagent with a fresh context window, keeping the coordinator lean and each agent fully focused on its single task:
   • Step 1 (MODEL_STANDARD subagent) — bmad-create-story: generates and validates the story spec
   • Step 2 (MODEL_STANDARD subagent) — bmad-dev-story: implements the code
   • Step 3 (MODEL_QUALITY subagent) — bmad-code-review: reviews and fixes the implementation
   • Step 4 (MODEL_STANDARD subagent) — commit, push, open PR, monitor CI, fix any failing checks
   • Step 5 (MODEL_STANDARD subagent) — PR code review: reviews diff, applies fixes, pushes clean
4. (MODEL_STANDARD subagent) Optionally auto-merges batch PRs sequentially (lowest story number first), resolving any conflicts
5. Waits, then loops back for the next batch — until the entire sprint is done

Configuration

BAD is configured at install time (/bad setup) and stores settings in the bad: section of _bmad/config.yaml. All values can be overridden at runtime with KEY=VALUE args.

Variable	Config Key	Default	Description
MAX_PARALLEL_STORIES	max_parallel_stories	3	Stories to run per batch
WORKTREE_BASE_PATH	worktree_base_path	.worktrees	Base directory for per-story git worktrees (relative to repo root)
MODEL_STANDARD	model_standard	sonnet	Model for create, dev, and PR steps
MODEL_QUALITY	model_quality	opus	Model for code review step
AUTO_PR_MERGE	auto_pr_merge	false	Auto-merge PRs sequentially after each batch
RUN_CI_LOCALLY	run_ci_locally	false	Run CI locally instead of GitHub Actions
WAIT_TIMER_SECONDS	wait_timer_seconds	3600	Seconds to wait between batches
RETRO_TIMER_SECONDS	retro_timer_seconds	600	Seconds before auto-retrospective after epic completion
CONTEXT_COMPACTION_THRESHOLD	context_compaction_threshold	80	Context window % at which to compact context
TIMER_SUPPORT	timer_support	true	Use native platform timers; false for prompt-based continuation
MONITOR_SUPPORT	monitor_support	true	Use the Monitor tool for CI/PR-merge polling; false for Bedrock/Vertex/Foundry
API_FIVE_HOUR_THRESHOLD	api_five_hour_threshold	80	(Claude Code) 5-hour usage % at which to pause
API_SEVEN_DAY_THRESHOLD	api_seven_day_threshold	95	(Claude Code) 7-day usage % at which to pause
API_USAGE_THRESHOLD	api_usage_threshold	80	(Other harnesses) Generic usage % at which to pause

Agent Harness Support

BAD is harness-agnostic. Setup detects your installed harnesses by checking for their directories at the project root (.claude/ for Claude Code, .cursor/ for Cursor, .github/skills/ for GitHub Copilot, etc.) and configures platform-specific settings accordingly:

• Claude Code — native timer support (CronCreate), Claude model names (sonnet/opus/haiku), 5-hour and 7-day rate limit thresholds
• Other harnesses — prompt-based continuation, free-text model names, single generic usage threshold

In multi-harness projects, setup runs once per detected harness and stores per-harness model settings (e.g. claude_model_standard, cursor_model_standard).

Reconfigure

To update your configuration at any time:

/bad configure

License

MIT © 2026 Marie Stephen Leo