When to Use

• User runs /devflow language
• User asks to change the conversation language
• User asks DevFlow to speak in a specific language
• First-time setup when user wants non-English interaction

Instructions

Step 1: Show language menu

Display this interactive menu:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  DevFlow — Language / Idioma / Idioma
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Select your preferred language:

  1. 🇺🇸  English
  2. 🇧🇷  Português (Brasil)
  3. 🇪🇸  Español

  Current: {current_language}

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

If the user provided the language directly (e.g., /devflow language pt-BR or /devflow language português), skip the menu and go to Step 2.

Language code mapping:

• 1, en, en-US, english, inglês, inglés → en-US
• 2, pt, pt-BR, português, portugues, portuguese → pt-BR
• 3, es, es-ES, español, espanol, spanish → es-ES

Step 2: Save preference

After the user selects a language, save the preference file:

Project-level (recommended — each project can have its own language):

echo "LANGUAGE_CODE" > .devflow-language

User-level (global fallback for all projects):

echo "LANGUAGE_CODE" > ~/.devflow-language

Ask the user which scope they prefer. Default to project-level if they don't specify.

The file contains just the language code (e.g., pt-BR), no other content.

Step 3: Propagate to dotcontext and superpowers

After saving the preference file, propagate the language to integrated tools:

dotcontext MCP (if available)

The dotcontext CLI accepts --lang <locale> as a global flag. Update .mcp.json to pass the language to the MCP server:

# Read current .mcp.json and update the dotcontext args to include --lang

Use python3 to update the .mcp.json:

import json

mcp_path = ".mcp.json"
with open(mcp_path) as f:
    config = json.load(f)

if "dotcontext" in config.get("mcpServers", {}):
    args = config["mcpServers"]["dotcontext"]["args"]
    # Remove existing --lang/-l flags
    new_args = []
    skip_next = False
    for i, arg in enumerate(args):
        if skip_next:
            skip_next = False
            continue
        if arg in ("--lang", "-l"):
            skip_next = True
            continue
        new_args.append(arg)
    # Add --lang before "mcp" subcommand
    mcp_idx = new_args.index("mcp") if "mcp" in new_args else len(new_args)
    new_args.insert(mcp_idx, LANGUAGE_CODE)
    new_args.insert(mcp_idx, "--lang")
    config["mcpServers"]["dotcontext"]["args"] = new_args

    with open(mcp_path, "w") as f:
        json.dump(config, f, indent=2)

Map DevFlow locale codes to dotcontext locale codes:

• en-US → en
• pt-BR → pt-BR
• es-ES → es

Important: After updating .mcp.json, inform the user that the dotcontext MCP server language will take effect on the next session restart.

superpowers

Superpowers does not have a dedicated language configuration. However, the language instruction injected by the SessionStart hook already controls the LLM's response language, which covers all superpowers skill interactions. No additional propagation needed.

Step 4: Confirm and switch

After saving, immediately switch your conversation language to the selected one. Confirm in the new language:

• en-US: "Language set to English. All DevFlow interactions will now be in English. Hook messages and dotcontext will switch on the next session."
• pt-BR: "Idioma definido para Português (Brasil). Todas as interações do DevFlow agora serão em português. Mensagens dos hooks e dotcontext serão traduzidas na próxima sessão."
• es-ES: "Idioma configurado a Español. Todas las interacciones de DevFlow ahora serán en español. Los mensajes de hooks y dotcontext se traducirán en la próxima sesión."

Step 5: Apply immediately in conversation

From this point forward in the current conversation, respond in the selected language. The hook messages (session-start, post-compact, etc.) will switch automatically on the next session start.

Examples

User runs /devflow language: → Show the menu, wait for selection, save .devflow-language, confirm in new language

User says "fale em português": → Detect intent, save pt-BR to .devflow-language, confirm in Portuguese, continue in Portuguese

User runs /devflow language es: → Skip menu, save es-ES, confirm: "Idioma configurado a Español..."

Guidelines

• The .devflow-language file is just a locale code string (e.g., en-US), one line, no whitespace
• Project-level (.devflow-language in project root) overrides user-level (~/.devflow-language)
• Supported codes: en-US, pt-BR, es-ES (extensible via locales/ directory)
• After setting, the LLM must switch its own response language immediately
• Hook messages only switch on the next session (they run in bash, not in LLM context)
• Adding a new language requires creating locales/{code}/messages.sh — the framework picks it up automatically