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Project Setup Wizard

The setup wizard (pan setup) interactively guides you through complete project configuration, replacing the minimal pan project add with a comprehensive setup flow.

Running the Wizard

The wizard asks questions, detects project structure, applies templates, and optionally spawns a Setup Agent for AI-assisted configuration.

Setup Flow

Step 1: Project Location

Step 2: Project Type Detection

The wizard scans your project directory and detects the structure:

Step 3: Template Selection

Based on your project structure, the wizard recommends a template:

Step 4: Repository Configuration

Step 5: Issue Tracker

Step 6: Meta Repo

Step 7: Review & Save

Project Templates

Templates are pre-built configurations for common project archetypes. They live in Overdeck’s source and are applied during setup.

Template Structure

Template Format

Setup Agent

The Setup Agent is an AI agent that explores your codebase to detect conventions and generate configuration files. It’s spawned optionally by the wizard for AI-assisted setup.

What the Setup Agent Does

  1. Explores the codebase — Reads READMEs, package.json files, CI configs, Terraform files
  2. Detects conventions — Branch naming patterns, PR conventions, code style, test frameworks
  3. Generates project context — Writes project-specific AI instructions for only non-obvious conventions
  4. Generates repo-map.md — Documents each repo’s purpose, dependencies, and relationships
  5. Generates repo-groups.yaml — Suggests logical groupings based on naming patterns
  6. Generates onboarding checklist — Lists prerequisites, API keys, access requirements

Generated Meta Repo Structure

Spawning the Setup Agent

The Setup Agent runs in a tmux session, similar to planning agents:

Template Selection Guide

Deprecating pan project add

The old pan project add command is deprecated in favor of pan setup. It only did basic detection (monorepo vs polyrepo, Linear team prefix) and wrote minimal config. pan setup provides:
  • Comprehensive configuration (workspaces, services, quality gates)
  • Template-based defaults
  • AI-assisted convention detection
  • Meta repo scaffolding