C.R.I.S.S.P.

The agentic SDLC framework for Claude Code: AI colleagues build, guards prove, a person decides.

C.R.I.S.S.P. (Consistent · Repeatable · Innovative · Secure · Scalable · Programming) turns one repository into a team: AI colleagues that plan, build, review and test the product with you, guards that prove every change, and you, the product owner, who decides what gets built, what is accepted and what goes live. The whole software development lifecycle (SDLC), from the first observation to the release that delivered it, runs in plain files next to the code, so every step can be traced and every claim can be checked.

uvx crissp init --product "My product"

Your AI colleagues

Each colleague has a clear job and clear limits. None of them can declare its own work done, and none of them can release.

And you, the product owner: you take the decisions (each comes as options with a recommendation), ask for UX rounds, accept work, push and deploy. Every change to production asks you y/N.

The guards: proof, not promises

Guards are plain scripts, with no AI in them. They decide what is green.

• Test first: every item starts with a test that fails without the change. New code is fully covered, and the coverage gate only lets coverage go up.
• crissp check runs only what a change can affect (the impact plan), then moves the release certificate to exactly this commit. crissp check-all is the full run.
• The release gate lets a deploy through only with a green full run at most 7 days old, plus a green check for every change since, on the commit being deployed. It has no bypass.
• Secrets never go into git, an image, a log or a chat. Only their presence is ever printed.

See it

One local server (crissp dashboard, on 127.0.0.1) shows the tests, the backlog board and the UX team, in one dark look (a light theme is one click away). It never runs a test and loads nothing from the internet.

What the last run proved: tests, line and branch coverage, the coverage gate, every step.

The backlog board: epics, features and items, as Claude writes them through the crissp tool. Only you move work to done. The UX: approved designs epic fills itself when you approve a design.

The UX team's advice: scores per persona, what they agreed on, where they disagree, and advice you answer with Agree · Disagree · Later.

Before and after, then approve: what people see now (on a laptop or a phone) next to the designer's proposal, the same size, with Approve · Approve with a remark… · Again, with… · Reject right under it. An approval becomes a backlog item, and your remark is the first thing the builder reads in it.

The team: who they are, which device they use and what they look for, configured per product.

_{The pictures show a demo project made with crissp init. Its backlog, test run and screenshots are real; the UX round's and the design's text is a sample, because a real round runs on your own Claude login and costs tokens.}

Start a project

mkdir my-product && cd my-product
uvx crissp init --product "My product"     # git init, the agreement, the backlog, the configuration
claude                                     # ask it to fill in the <!-- CRISSP: … --> blocks with you
git diff && git add -A && git commit -m "CRISSP: adopt C.R.I.S.S.P."
crissp check-all && crissp dashboard

crissp init runs git init when the folder is not a repository yet, then writes:

• the agreement (crissp/CLAUDE.md, loaded by a short root CLAUDE.md in every Claude session);
• the backlog (crissp/backlog/), in plain Markdown next to the code;
• the product's parts (crissp/testsuite/suites.json) and its UX team (crissp/uxsuite/);
• a deployment template (crissp/deploy/: a Helm chart and Terraform);
• the release notes and the version;
• .mcp.json, so Claude Code starts the crissp tool, pinned to this version of crissp.

In an existing repository it adds only what is missing, and never overwrites a file. It never commits: you review the diff first.

Commands

The framework itself is described in crissp/CRISSP.md.

Requirements

Python 3.12 or newer, git and bash, and Claude Code for the AI colleagues. uv runs the test tools. helm is needed to prove the deployment template; Terraform is optional (its checks say "skipped" without it). The UX team's screenshots use Playwright under uv. The engine itself uses only the Python standard library.

Licence

Apache License 2.0: see LICENSE and NOTICE. The bundled Figtree typeface is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.