Core Concepts

Projects

A project is a planning workspace for a product initiative, technical change, or existing codebase.

Each project holds what Opheleon knows about your system and the planning overlays your team creates on top of it.

Goals

For new work, a project starts from a goal: a plain-language description of what you want to build and why. Opheleon uses the goal to drive planning and to decide what to clarify before drafting.

Planning overlays

When you plan new work, Opheleon produces overlays — focused documents layered on top of what already exists:

• PRD overlay — what the product should do: users, behavior, requirements, edge cases, non-goals, and success criteria.
• Tech Approach overlay — how to build it: architecture, key technical decisions, security and failure modes, rollout, and an implementation plan.

For product work where requirements aren’t settled yet, the PRD overlay is completed first and becomes input to the Tech Approach overlay. For tech-driven work — refactors, migrations, or goals that already have a concrete PRD — Opheleon skips the PRD overlay and runs only the Tech Approach overlay.

Import

When you connect GitHub, Opheleon imports your codebase to learn the system you already have, so overlays plan against your real code. Import runs on its own, with no setup work from your team.

Unknowns

When Opheleon imports your code, anything it can’t be sure of is recorded as an unknown instead of guessed. You fill in unknowns and correct mistakes with comments, and that context persists — so each later import already reflects it. See Import Unknowns.

Drafts and commits

A draft is a working version Opheleon produces. You shape it by giving feedback — Opheleon makes the corrections — rather than editing it by hand.

A committed document is an approved version of the plan. Once committed, it becomes part of the project history.

Review gates

Before an overlay is finalized, Opheleon pauses for human review. It asks clarifying questions when scope is unresolved, and requests your approval on the assembled draft. You can approve, request changes, or reject and rerun the stage.

Task output

Once the Tech Approach overlay is approved, Opheleon turns its implementation plan into tasks — each with a ready-to-use prompt for a coding agent. You can optionally export them to your task management tool. See Generate Tasks.