Managing Autonomous Development
Overview
Manage Sugar's autonomous development workflows: create development tasks, check system status, review pending work, and start autonomous execution mode. Sugar orchestrates AI-driven development by queuing tasks with type, priority, and execution parameters, then processing them sequentially or in parallel.
Prerequisites
- Sugar plugin installed and configured in the project
- Sugar CLI available in the system PATH (
sugar --version) - Project repository initialized with Sugar configuration file
- Understanding of task types:
feature,bugfix,refactor,test,chore - Write access to the project codebase for autonomous execution
Instructions
- Check Sugar system status with
/sugar-statusto verify the daemon is running and view queue depth - Review pending tasks with
/sugar-reviewto see queued work items, their priorities, and estimated complexity - Create new tasks with
/sugar-task <description> --type <type> --priority <1-5>specifying the task description, type, and priority level - Validate Sugar configuration before starting autonomous mode: ensure test commands, lint rules, and commit settings are correct
- Start autonomous execution in safe mode first:
/sugar-run --dry-run --onceto preview what Sugar would do without making changes - Monitor execution output for errors, test failures, or unexpected behavior during the dry run
- Start full autonomous execution with
/sugar-runwhen confident in the configuration - Review completed tasks and their outputs: check generated code, test results, and commit messages
Output
- Task creation confirmations with task ID, type, priority, and queue position
- System status reports showing queue depth, active tasks, and execution history
- Task review summaries with descriptions, priorities, and estimated effort
- Execution logs showing task processing, code changes, test results, and commits
- Summary reports of completed autonomous development sessions
Error Handling
| Error | Cause | Solution |
|-------|-------|---------|
| Sugar daemon not running | Sugar service not started or crashed | Start with sugar start or check logs for crash reason |
| Task creation failed: invalid type | Unsupported task type specified | Use valid types: feature, bugfix, refactor, test, chore |
| Autonomous execution failed: tests failing | Generated code does not pass project tests | Review the failing test output; fix the test or adjust the task description for clarity |
| Configuration file not found | Sugar config missing from project root | Initialize with sugar init to create the configuration file |
| Priority out of range | Priority value not between 1 and 5 | Use priority 1 (lowest) through 5 (highest/critical) |
Examples
- "Create a new Sugar task: 'Add input validation to the user registration endpoint' with type feature and priority 3."
- "Check the current Sugar system status and list all pending tasks in the queue."
- "Start Sugar autonomous mode in dry-run to preview what changes it would make for the next queued task."
Resources
- Sugar plugin documentation: https://github.com/roboticforce/sugar
- Task automation patterns: https://roboticforce.io/docs/sugar/
- Autonomous development best practices: https://roboticforce.io/docs/sugar/best-practices/