---
name: "Spikes skip merge and stop for human review"
agent: coder-opus
---

# Story 265: Spikes skip merge and stop for human review

## User Story

As a user, I want spike work items to stop after QA instead of auto-advancing to the merge stage, so that I can review the spike's findings and prototype code in the worktree before deciding what to do with them.

## Context

Spikes are investigative — their value is the findings and any prototype code, not a merge to master. The user needs to:
- Read the spike document with findings
- Review prototype code in the worktree
- Optionally build and run the prototype to validate the approach
- Then manually decide: archive the spike and create follow-up stories, or reject and re-investigate

Currently all work items follow the same pipeline: coder → QA → merge → done. Spikes should diverge after QA and wait for human review instead of auto-advancing to merge.

## Acceptance Criteria

- [ ] Items with `_spike_` in the filename skip the merge stage after QA passes
- [ ] After QA, spike items remain accessible for human review (worktree preserved, not cleaned up)
- [ ] Spikes do not auto-advance to `4_merge/` — they stay in `3_qa/` or move to a review-hold state
- [ ] The human can manually archive the spike when done reviewing
- [ ] Non-spike items (stories, bugs, refactors) continue through the full pipeline as before

## Out of Scope

- New UI for spike review (manual file inspection is fine)
- Changes to the spike creation flow
