claude-code-kit 0.65.0

Cookiecutter-style scaffolder for an autonomous Claude Code SDLC configuration (no app code, no Docker). Asks ordered questions and installs CLAUDE.md + .claude/ (rules, the chosen profile's agents/skills, hooks, artifact templates) + optional .mcp.json; run /sdlc to drive spec → review → build → test → security → ship through profile-aware quality gates, working memory, and a self-improving learnings loop.

claude-kit

Turn Claude Code into a disciplined engineering team: one command — /sdlc <task> — runs your request through spec → review → code → test → security → PR, with a quality gate between every phase.

The differentiator is trust: no gate passes without real, cited command output, so a green result means the checks actually ran. It installs as configuration only — no runtime, no application code, no Docker.

⚡ Quick start · 🧭 How it works · 🔁 The pipeline · ⚖️ Compare · 🔒 Security · 📚 Docs

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What is this?

Claude Code is brilliant at single tasks — but a real change is never just one task. It's a spec, a plan, code, review, tests, a security pass, a PR. claude-kit turns that whole lifecycle into a pipeline of focused agents and installs it into Claude Code as configuration.

Your request flows through specialists — a spec writer, a developer, independent reviewers, testers, security scanners, a PR raiser — coordinated by an Orchestrator that runs independent work in parallel and refuses to advance until each phase's quality gate passes. Choose your stack, rigor, and team scope at init; everything else adapts.

Use claude-kit if you drive real repository changes with Claude Code and want a repeatable spec → review → test → security → PR workflow whose quality gates won't advance on an unproven verdict.

Skip it if you want a small prompt pack, don't want project config written into your repo, or need a standalone runtime/daemon. claude-kit is configuration for Claude Code, not a separate runtime — and its guard hooks are convenience guardrails (they need jq + a POSIX shell and no-op without them), not a hardened security boundary. See Known limitations.

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Quick start

The fastest path to a gated run — no CLI install, no init, no restart:

/plugin marketplace add ajyadav013/claude-kit
/plugin install claude-kit
/claude-kit:sdlc Add a /health endpoint that returns the build version

That's the whole loop in three lines: the standard pipeline runs immediately — spec → review → build → test, gate by gate — with every verdict backed by real output.

Proof it works: examples/real-run/ is a genuine captured run where the devils-advocate caught a Medium bug a unanimous review missed, and the gate refused to advance until it was fixed.

When you want the pipeline tuned to your repo — your stack, commands, rigor profile, and the safety hooks — run init:

A) As a Claude Code plugin  (recommended)

/claude-kit:init        # Claude asks you the questions in chat, then runs the CLI non-interactively
# ↻ restart Claude Code so the project's agents, skills & hooks load
/sdlc Add a CSV export button to the reports page

/claude-kit:init needs the Python CLI on PATH (pipx install claude-code-kit) — it resolves your stack/profile and records checksums for safe upgrade. Details: docs/install.md.

B) As a pip package  (CI, onboarding, non-plugin workflows)

pip install claude-code-kit             # note: the pip name is claude-code-kit, not claude-kit

claude-kit init                 # interactive: prompts for stack, profile, MCP
claude-kit init --defaults      # non-interactive: React + Python/FastAPI + Postgres + standard

Prerequisites: Claude Code; Python ≥ 3.9 for the CLI; jq for the shell hooks (they no-op without it). Windows users: run inside WSL or Git Bash for the hooks. Every install question, the init.yaml format, what lands on disk, and plugin-update steps: docs/install.md.

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What you get

Area	What you get
🔁 Pipeline & quality gates	Gate-enforced progression — a phase advances only with zero open Critical/High/Medium findings — plus a fast-track for small changes and an anti-sycophancy devils-advocate pass
🤖 Agent roster	28 tiered agents led by an Orchestrator that never writes code, plus per-database overlay agents and 6 org personas (full roster)
📐 Rules & skills	25 stack-agnostic core rules + 105 context-activated skills (57 core + 48 stack-collection), pulled into context on demand
🧱 Stacks & overlays	A stack-agnostic core + 13 overlay rule files (React · FastAPI · Go · Postgres · Mongo) wired to your exact commands and path-scoped to load only when you touch matching files
🛠️ Hooks & guards	18 event hooks — deterministic safety guards and advisory warnings — that no-op gracefully without jq
📦 Distribution & lifecycle	Plugin and pip from one source, 24 ready MCP fragments (version-pinned), edit-preserving upgrade, and a root AGENTS.md at init so non-Claude agents share the same standards

Profiles (lean · standard · enterprise), team scopes, autonomy levels, and org capability packs decide how much of this actually installs — see Profiles & what lands in your project.

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How it works

Four ideas do the heavy lifting:

1. Evidence or it didn't happen. Every gate verdict — PASS or FAIL — must cite the command that ran and its captured output. A verdict that's invented, assumed, or read off still-running work is an auto-Critical finding — the same severity as a hardcoded secret (quality-gates.md §2.5).
2. Quality gates with a shared severity model. Every finding is classified Critical / High / Medium / Low / Cosmetic. A gate passes only with zero Critical/High/Medium open. No silent advancement.
3. RARV self-check. Every agent runs Reason → Act → Reflect → Verify and must show a green Verify (real commands run, not imagined) before handing off.
4. Blind review + Devil's Advocate. Parallel reviewers judge independently; a unanimous PASS triggers an adversarial devils-advocate pass before the gate may close — an explicit guard against agents rubber-stamping each other.

See docs/architecture.md for the full diagrams, including how one source of truth ships as both a plugin and a pip package.

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The pipeline

/sdlc reads the profile you chose and runs only that profile's gates:

flowchart TD
    REQ(["/sdlc request"]) --> CLS{"Classify"}
    CLS -->|"feature"| SPEC["Spec & Dev Docs"]
    SPEC --> EM{{"Gate: EM approved"}}
    EM -->|"pass"| STORY["Story breakdown + coverage gate<br/>story-planner"]
    STORY --> LANES["Parallel lanes:<br/>Senior Dev → Architect → Developer → Code Review"]
    LANES --> MR{{"Gate: Merge Reviewer"}}
    MR --> TEST["Unit · E2E · Integration + Senior verification"]
    TEST --> TCG{{"Gate: Test coverage<br/>+ Devil's Advocate"}}
    TCG --> SEC{{"Gate: Security Clear"}}
    SEC --> OPS{{"Gates: Pipeline Green ·<br/>Observability Ready · Acceptance"}}
    OPS --> PR["PR Raiser"] --> HUMAN(["Human review + deploy"])
    CLS -->|"fast-track (<5 files)"| FT["Developer → Review → Test → PR"] --> HUMAN

Profile	Gates that run
lean	code-review · build-green
standard	spec-complete · em-approved · code-review · build-green · test-coverage · security-clear · contract-clear*
enterprise	standard + pipeline-green · observability-ready · acceptance

* contract-clear (API breaking-change diff) self-skips when the stack exposes no API surface. A fast-track mode collapses small changes (< 5 files) to Developer → Code Reviewer → Tester → PR; organization scope at regulated strictness adds accessibility-clear (WCAG-AA on changed UI).

See the real captured run in examples/real-run/ — a feature driven through every gate on a Go project, with the verbatim state file, agent verdicts, diff, and an asciicast — or the synthetic walkthrough of the default stack. To capture your own publishable run: docs/capture-a-real-run.md.

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Profiles & what lands in your project

The profile you pick decides how much lands in .claude/. Measured on a React + FastAPI + PostgreSQL project, individual scope:

Profile	Agents	Skills	Rules
lean	8	15	36
standard (default)	26	43	36
enterprise	31	105	36

• Rules are profile-independent — every profile installs the same 25 core rules + the selected stack's overlays (11 for this stack = 36); rigor changes the agents and gates, not the rule set.
• Installs are stack-true — every lane offers none, and a lane you don't have installs nothing: a backend-only project gets no React rules, frontend skills, or npm commands.
• enterprise installs the whole skill collection — including stacks you didn't select. That's disk footprint, not always-resident context, but prefer standard for a tighter install. See docs/skill-audit.md.

Organization scope adds teams, 5 autonomy levels, review strictness, and capability packs — see docs/org-capabilities.md.

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How claude-kit compares

The closest alternative is just using Claude Code's own subagents — and that's the comparison that matters most: native gives you the agents; claude-kit gives you the governance.

Compared to…	What it is	What claude-kit adds
Native Claude Code subagents / Agent Teams	Spawn parallel agents on demand; you define workflow and verification yourself each time	A fixed, sequenced pipeline with owned gates, an evidence requirement for every verdict, the devils-advocate anti-rubber-stamp pass, and structured resume from the pipeline state file
wshobson/agents & similar collections	Large libraries of individual subagent prompts you pick from	A smaller, opinionated set wired into a sequenced pipeline — agents are stages that hand off and block on each other, not a menu
GitHub spec-kit	Spec-driven development as a platform: constitution → spec → tasks → analyze, plus label-driven CI stages	The same coverage-gate idea absorbed into a broader in-session lifecycle — review, security, build, test, release, and observability gates with enforced severity blocking. Complementary: their CI stages, this kit's gate depth (details)
claude-flow / multi-agent runtimes	Runtime orchestrators that execute swarms of agents	Portable configuration, not a running process — no daemon, no lock-in, no app code
dotfiles / CLAUDE.md starters	A single rules file or settings snippet	A catalog-driven generator: resolves your stack/profile/scope into the right subset of 25 rules, 28 agents, 105 skills, gates, and hooks — kept upgradeable with your edits preserved

Choose claude-kit when you want a consistent, gate-enforced autonomous-SDLC setup that's the same across every repo and stack, installs in seconds, and ships nothing you have to run. It is not a runtime or a code library — it's the configuration that makes Claude Code's agents behave like a disciplined team.

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Use beyond Claude Code (export)

init already emits a repo-root AGENTS.md so teammates on Cursor, VS Code, or Copilot get the kit's standards from day one. claude-kit export projects the full config into their native formats:

claude-kit export . -t cursor -t agents -t copilot

Fidelity is honest: rules, the project charter, and MCP servers port cleanly; the enforced gates and reviewer subagents are Claude-Code-only and travel as a single-agent checklist instead — every exported document says so. Full fidelity matrix: docs/cursor-export.md.

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Influences & reuse-first

claude-kit evolves by reviewing excellent open-source projects and industry material, then adopting only the genuinely-new ideas — each review fetches the real source, adversarially maps it against the kit's existing files, and ships only the non-duplicative gaps (many reviews conclude with "0 new agents/skills/rules" on purpose). The full adoption history — from Agentic Design Patterns through the alibaba/microsoft/google/Meta/Netflix·aws·apple org reviews — lives in docs/influences.md, with per-release detail in the CHANGELOG.

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Security & trust model

claude-kit installs configuration only — no application code, no Docker, nothing that runs as a service. Three honest caveats before you rely on it:

• The guard hooks are convenience, not a hardened boundary. They raise the cost of a mistake but don't sandbox the agent; they need a POSIX shell + jq and silently no-op without them. Seatbelts, not walls.
• Most quality gates are agent protocols, not mechanical enforcement. Only the hook scripts are deterministic, host-enforced checks; a capable model can still be wrong or skip a step — keep a human in the loop for anything that matters. Relatedly: the agents' permissionMode confinement (read-only reviewers) binds only in init-scaffolded projects — plugin-loaded agents ignore it, so run the pipeline from a scaffolded project when that confinement matters.
• MCP servers are third-party code. Each fragment runs an external package — pinned to an exact version, never @latest — that claude-kit references but does not vendor or audit. Review a server's source and license before enabling it.

Releases are published to PyPI via OIDC Trusted Publishing with PEP 740 build attestations. Report vulnerabilities privately — see SECURITY.md.

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Docs & deeper reference

Doc	What's in it
docs/install.md	Every install detail: prerequisites, Windows, plugin updates, all init questions, init.yaml, what lands on disk
docs/cli.md	Full CLI command reference, safe-upgrade mechanics, troubleshooting
docs/agents.md	How to drive the agents + the full 28-agent roster and per-run cost
docs/architecture.md	Diagrams: distribution, catalog resolution, the state machine — and how to extend via the catalog
docs/influences.md	The reuse-first adoption history: what we learned, shipped, and deliberately skipped
docs/autonomous-operation.md	Unattended runs: permission modes × autonomy levels, headless mode, the bounded loop script, CI-trigger design
docs/cursor-export.md	Export fidelity matrix and .mdc mapping
docs/org-capabilities.md	Organization scope: packs, personas, autonomy, review strictness
docs/skill-audit.md	Per-profile skill footprint and context economics
docs/KNOWN_LIMITATIONS.md	What the kit deliberately does not claim
examples/real-run/	The captured, gated real run (evidence, not marketing)
CONTRIBUTING.md	Contributor workflow; CLAUDE.md covers developing the kit itself

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Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. To dogfood a local checkout:

# As a plugin:  /plugin marketplace add .   then   /plugin install claude-kit
# As the CLI:   pip install -e '.[dev]'   then   claude-kit init /tmp/demo --defaults   &&   pytest

License

MIT © Arjunsingh Yadav