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Methodologies

ido4 doesn’t force a methodology on you. It ships three — pick the one that fits how your team works, or extend one to make it yours.

Methodologies are profiles — data structures that define states, transitions, containers, validation pipelines, and principles. The engine reads the profile and generates everything: tools, prompts, BRE pipelines, compliance scoring. Tool counts vary because each methodology has different containers and state machines.

Profile Generation — how a profile drives tool and pipeline generation

Profile Generation — how a profile drives tool and pipeline generation

For teams that ship features whole.

Hydro organizes work into waves — self-contained delivery units executed one at a time. Related tasks group into epics, and the defining rule is: all tasks in an epic must be in the same wave. You don’t ship half a feature.

This is the methodology built for AI-augmented consulting — where a small senior team governs multiple AI agents delivering complete features to enterprise clients.

Why Hydro

  • Epic Integrity prevents partial feature delivery — no shipping auth tokens in wave-002 and RBAC in wave-003
  • Wave sequencing gives clear execution order with dependency coherence
  • Five principles provide comprehensive governance without methodology overhead
  • Refinement pipeline (Backlog -> In Refinement -> Ready for Dev) ensures tasks are well-specified before agents touch them

The workflow

Backlog -> In Refinement -> Ready for Dev -> In Progress -> In Review -> Done
                                                   |
                                               Blocked

7 states, 9 transitions (including backward transitions and administrative completion).

Containers

ContainerRoleKey Rule
WaveWhen work happensOnly one active at a time. Named wave-001-auth-system.
EpicWhat ships togetherAll tasks in an epic must share the same wave.

The five principles

  1. Epic Integrity — All tasks in an epic, same wave. Non-negotiable.
  2. Active Wave Singularity — One wave at a time. Focus.
  3. Dependency Coherence — Can’t build floor two before the foundation.
  4. Self-Contained Execution — Every wave has everything it needs.
  5. Atomic Completion — A wave at 90% is not complete.

58 MCP tools generated from profile.

Choosing your methodology

Your team ships complete features at once (consulting delivery, enterprise milestones) → Hydro. Epic Integrity ensures features don’t ship partially.

Your team works on diverse work types (stories, bugs, spikes, tech debt) with different quality requirements → Scrum. Type-scoped pipelines enforce the right quality gates per work type.

Your team bets on outcomes with fixed time budgets (product-driven orgs, startups) → Shape Up. The circuit breaker kills unfinished bets — scope gets hammered, not timelines.

Detailed comparison

QuestionHydroScrumShape Up
Do features need to ship whole?Yes — Epic IntegrityNo — epics span sprintsYes — Bet Integrity
Different quality gates per work type?NoYes — type-scoped pipelinesNo
What happens to unfinished work?Stays in wave until doneCarries over to next sprintKilled by circuit breaker
How many governance principles?514
Shaping/refinement pipeline?2-stage (refine, ready)1-stage (plan)2-stage (shape, bet)
Terminal statesDoneDoneShipped, Killed

How profiles work

A methodology profile defines everything the engine needs:

SectionWhat It Controls
statesWorkflow states with categories (todo, active, done, blocked)
transitionsValid state changes with source/target mappings
containersContainer types with singularity, completion rules, naming
integrityRulesRelationships between containers
principlesNamed governance rules with enforcement mechanisms
workItemsWork item types with lifecycle overrides
pipelinesBRE validation steps per transition (and per type)
complianceExpected lifecycle and scoring weights

The engine generates tools, prompts, and validation pipelines from this profile. Changing methodology = changing the profile, not the code.

Custom profiles

Extend a built-in profile and override what you need:

{
  "extends": "scrum",
  "id": "my-team",
  "pipelines": {
    "approve": {
      "steps": [
        "StatusTransitionValidation:DONE",
        "ApprovalRequirementValidation",
        "PRReviewValidation:2",
        "TestCoverageValidation:90",
        "SecurityScanValidation"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Everything else inherits from Scrum. See Configurable Methodology for full details.

At a glance

HydroScrumShape Up
States768
Transitions9810
Containers223
Integrity Rules201
Principles514
Work Item Types551
Type-Scoped PipelinesNoYesNo
Terminal States112
MCP Tools585654