Prefer the old long-form? See V1 archive.

Why a workbench per epic bundle, not a permanent hub?

Bundles are disposable. An epic (or a small set of related epics) gets picked up, planned, shipped, archived. A workbench matches that lifespan. A permanent team-wide hub drifts, accumulates stale context, becomes a second Jira. Explicitly throwaway by design.

Do I have to use Devin?

No. Every devkit command has a .cly variant that forces Claude: init.wb.cly, join.wb.cly, update.wb.cly. Inside a workbench, slash commands work the same under Claude or Devin (both read the same skills/). .dev variants force Devin.

What if dev and QA edit project.conf simultaneously?

Git merge conflict. Resolve normally and push. The file is shell; conflicts usually surface as duplicated array entries, easy to reconcile. Pull at session start, push at pause.

Can I run ralph without workspace-mode?

Yes. scripts/ralph-plan.sh falls back to per-repo: iterates each registered repo, runs ralph-plan inside, stitches results into ralph/workspace-plan.md. When workspace-mode is available in the ai-ralph fork you use, the adapter switches automatically.

Where do secrets go?

.mcp.json, which is gitignored. Use ${ENV_VAR} refs for every credential, never literal tokens. .mcp.json.template is committed and documents the agreed server set; each collaborator copies it to .mcp.json locally and fills env vars out-of-band. GitHub creds come from gh auth status; no tokens in repo.

How do I contribute a skill improvement back to the template?

Open a PR against amit-t/ai-workbench. wb.upgrade is strictly one-way (template → instance) by design, so upstream contributions go via PR, not sync. Hand-edits to template_owned paths in a stamped wb get overwritten on the next wb.upgrade. AGENTS.md tells agents not to touch those paths.

Can I rename the workbench repo?

Yes, but project.conf’s WORKBENCH_REPO must match afterwards. No auto-rename: rename on GitHub, update project.conf locally, push. Every collaborator re-pulls.

Is .workbench-state/ shared?

Yes, tracked in git. Both collaborators see the same published.json, approved.json, rejected.json. Deliberate: approval state is the shared contract ralph reads, so both sides must agree.

Why do I see “[wb] checking for updates…” on every wb command?

You don’t. First meaningful wb.* call per 12h window triggers a single GitHub-API call comparing your wb’s template version against upstream. Newer → one-line banner. Otherwise silent. Result cached 12h (configurable via check_ttl_hours). Fail-open: offline / rate-limit / missing gh all skip silently. Trivial list aliases (wb.published, wb.approved, wb.rejected) never trigger. Details: Versioning.