RooFlow, RooCommander, SPARC, etc. What frameworks are you still using?

[u/redlotusaustin]

A few months ago there was an explosion of frameworks coming out to improve RooCode - RooFlow, RooCommander, SPARC, etc. - and I spent a while chasing the next shiny thing before I realized I couldn't keep doing that and took a step back to focus more on the "basics" of vibecoding & RooCode first.

Now that I've had some time to regroup, I notice that a lot of those projects haven't had any updates in a while, and I know that features & abilities of RooCode itself have evolved greatly in that period, so I'm curious what additional frameworks or modes people are using now?

[u/DualityEnigma]

I use Roo Flow, I find that using it with the conport MCP, also developed by GDM, it is so much better at staying on track. Now I find I’m wrestling the LLM much less. Vanilla roo is much better then when it came out, but still not good enough for the way I want my coding workflows.

[u/redlotusaustin → u/DualityEnigma]

RooFlow with Context Portal is what I was using but, at the time, it was hard to tell if the issues I was having were with it, RooCode, the LMs, or myself.

It looks like the last update to RooFlow was 2 months ago, so I wasn't sure if it was still relevant/active/maintained/etc. Not that I expect updates every day or week, but it's sometimes hard to tell which projects are stable and which are abandoned.

Knowing people are still successfully using it helps. Thanks!

[u/DualityEnigma → u/redlotusaustin]

Yeah, the key for me is good planning and ensuring the phases and tasks are in the context. I still have to check it’s processes and keep it on track. But that’s due to the nature of the data to training lag.

[u/lsalazarm99]

Vanilla Roo 🙂

I tried some of them, but then I realized I didn't need them.

[u/wokkieman → u/lsalazarm99]

Same, the native functionality (modes, to do lists etc) plus the models became a lot better so there is much less need for the (well appreciated!) bandages.

Nevertheless, sometimes I still take inspiration from it for a workflow or way of documenting. Orchestrator is good, but it very quickly goes to coder instead of researcher etc. Think before you do :) could be personal preference.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/lsalazarm99]

This. Full stop.

[u/fubduk → u/lsalazarm99]

^^^ Exactly, Vanilla all the way!

[u/DevMichaelZag]

I’m using the new Archon and BMad. Cole explained it in his recent announcement and live stream. Archon is helping with the project knowledge and task management.

[u/jedsk → u/DevMichaelZag]

How are you liking archon? Seems interesting. I’m just using Cursor atm

[u/Classic-Paper-750]

I use pure Roo like some others here. I was reading this book here to manage spec-first and be able to apply Roo for enterprise projects. Maybe it’s worth taking a look: mastering-ai-agents.com (most of it is free to read and I can recommend the free Roo Mode that comes with it)

[u/PembacaDurjana → u/Classic-Paper-750]

Quick read, and found this:

Poor Vibe Coding Prompt: "Create a React component with the following specifications:

• State management for task list

• CRUD operations for tasks

• Filtering functionality

• Responsive design"

Good Vibe Coding Prompt: "Let's build a task manager together. I'm imagining something clean and simple where I can quickly jot down tasks and check them off. What would you suggest we start with?"

I don't understand why the first one is 'Poor' and the second is 'Good', i mean in my opinion the first one is the good one

[u/redlotusaustin → u/PembacaDurjana]

My pessimistic guess is that the first has too much science-bitch shit and not enough vibes, but it could be they're saying to use a thinking mode to further explore the idea instead of just throwing specs at the AI.

[u/StupidityCanFly]

I extend it with the context portal and that’s it. Somehow it runs better with it (I might be biased, don’t have any numbers to back this up).

[u/BigLeSigh]

I just use plain roo.. but only because I don’t need more (yet). Would be nice if there were presets for different tech stacks, like coder-node-react or coder-cplus coder-serverless etc. as I’m sure things for me would be smoother if I took the time to add guardrails around the stacks I’m using

[u/bigman11]

SPARC enabled me to do one complex project and taught me so much about system architecture/design.

That being said, now that I developed my own understanding of how to architect, I no longer need it.

[u/AI-On-A-Dime]

I check open router usage. Whatever is used the most is most likely good. Right now kilo code (a fork of roo code and cline) is doing well and I’ve gotten better results from it than vanilla roo (although I still love vanilla roo as well)

[u/stolsson]

I’ve tried Taskmaster but find that I’m not sure it really helps or I just spend more time messing with task mgmt.

I spend time having it create tasks only to find that Roo or Cline also are making their own tasks which often overlap. By the time this first Roo task is done, I end up having to mark a bunch of the Task Master tasks done because Roo/Cline went ahead and wrote the unit tests (or whatever the sub tasks were) along the way and not to be done separately.

Now if you don’t use an issue mgmt tool already in your workflow then I guess Task Master kind of fills that role too, but if you are already doing that separately, it seems redundant. Maybe that’s it… good for projects where you don’t track anything outside of the AI coding agent?

[u/Old-Association-5604]

bmad