solodeveling 0.1.1

Single-agent-first software delivery protocol and portable skill suite

Solodeveling

One agent. The right amount of process. From a tiny fix to a verified release.

Solodeveling is a single-agent-first software delivery protocol for solo developers. It keeps a single primary agent oriented across discovery, planning, implementation, verification, security, release, and maintenance. Small, safe work can stay ephemeral. Resumable or risky work gains durable memory and stronger gates only when the risk justifies them.

Use the same canonical skill suite with Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, and generic Agent Skills clients. Subagents may still be used when useful, but Solodeveling does not require a multi-agent team to complete the ordinary workflow.

Status: Alpha releases are published on npm, PyPI, and as an immutable GitHub Release. Codex and Claude Code have each passed one bounded representative live scenario. Cursor has structural adapter evidence only because cursor-agent was unavailable. Tier 1 remains unverified until the full core scenario matrix passes.

Quick start

Node.js users need one command:

npx solodeveling install

For a permanent command:

npm install -g solodeveling
solodeveling install

Python users can run it without a permanent install or install it as a tool:

uvx solodeveling install
uv tool install solodeveling
pipx install solodeveling

All channels expose one public command: solodeveling. See Installation for prerequisites, platform support, upgrades, and integrity controls.

Why Solodeveling

• Single-agent-first: keep one accountable primary agent instead of requiring delegation, role hand-offs, or parallel workers for ordinary delivery.
• Quiet for small work: a safe Quick task can use zero required questions, zero project-memory writes, and verification proportional to its impact.
• Durable when it matters: resumable work records current state; Critical work adds explicit security, recovery, evidence, and release boundaries.
• Complete delivery lifecycle: use one vocabulary from discovery and coding through debugging, verification, release, and maintenance.
• Project-local and portable: install the same skills into the runtimes detected in the repository without searching for or modifying global agent installations.

Work level	Default behavior	Persistent overhead
Quick	Act immediately when intent is clear; escalate if risk appears	None required for safe ephemeral work
Standard	Shape, plan, implement, and verify with resumable state	Compact current state and one active work item
Critical	Add security, recovery, provenance, and explicit authorization gates	Auditable work and evidence records

How it compares

These projects have different defaults rather than a universal winner. The table summarizes their public documentation as of July 2026; it is not a controlled speed or quality benchmark.

Project	Documented default	Strongest fit	Main contrast with Solodeveling
Solodeveling	One primary agent with risk-scaled workflow and memory	Solo maintainers balancing tiny fixes with security, release, and maintenance work	Quick work may stay ephemeral; compact state expands into auditable evidence only when needed
Superpowers	Complete development methodology built from composable skills	Developers who want modular engineering skills, planning, review, and subagent-oriented paths where supported	Solodeveling keeps one accountable primary agent as the ordinary default and does not require delegation
GSD	Lightweight meta-prompting, context engineering, and spec-driven execution	Longer builds where countering context degradation is the main concern	Solodeveling organizes persistence and verification around task risk and the full delivery lifecycle
GitHub Spec Kit	Specification-centered flow: Spec, Plan, Tasks, Implement	Work where the specification should remain the primary source of truth across many agent integrations	Solodeveling allows safe Quick work to skip a persistent spec while retaining escalation paths
BMAD Method	Scale-adaptive agile workflows with 12+ specialist roles and 34+ workflows	Users who want guided agile personas, modules, and a broad workflow ecosystem	Solodeveling favors one primary agent and a smaller common vocabulary across the lifecycle

What faster means here

Solodeveling optimizes workflow overhead, not unmeasured model intelligence. It does not yet claim to complete coding tasks faster than the alternatives above. A fair claim requires the same repository, model, prompt, task set, and repeated runs.

Evidence from this repository	Observed result	What it supports
Ephemeral documentation dogfood	Zero user questions and no Quick-task memory artifacts	Small clear work can avoid coordination and persistence ceremony
Memory-only GitHub CI	Focused validation jobs completed in 18-20 seconds	Memory updates do not trigger package, native, or full test jobs
Docs-only GitHub CI	Complete Python regression job completed in 23-33 seconds	Documentation retains meaningful verification without the cross-platform package matrix
Bounded live portability scenario	Codex and Claude Code each scored 1.0 on one Quick scenario	The canonical behavior can transfer across two available runtimes; it does not establish full Tier 1 support

See EVIDENCE-006, EVIDENCE-019, and EVIDENCE-025 for methods and limitations.

Who it is for

Choose Solodeveling when you:

• maintain a project alone or with one primary coding agent;
• want tiny fixes to stay lightweight without losing discipline on risky work;
• need continuity across sessions without accumulating a document for every action;
• own both implementation and release or maintenance responsibilities; or
• switch between Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, or another Agent Skills client.

Another approach may fit better when you want specialized personas and multi-agent coordination as the default, require a formal specification artifact for every change, or need a mature ecosystem with a much larger behavioral evidence base.

Automatic project installation

The ordinary workflow has no required options:

solodeveling install
solodeveling check
solodeveling uninstall

Solodeveling first reuses any installation it already manages. Otherwise it detects project-local Codex/Agent Skills, Claude Code, and Cursor directories. It installs every distinct runtime found, and defaults to the standard .agents/skills path when the project has no runtime marker. It never searches global executables or writes outside the current project.

Installation validates the skill suite, preflights every detected target, rejects symlinks and path traversal, refuses unmanaged collisions, copies files atomically, and records managed hashes. Check detects missing, changed, or unexpected managed files. Uninstall removes only unchanged managed files and has no force-delete mode.

Start a fresh agent session after first installation, then invoke $solodeveling in Codex, /solodeveling in Claude Code or Cursor, or the client-defined invocation in another Agent Skills runtime.

Advanced overrides

Automation and unusual workspaces may still select an exact runtime or another project. --dry-run remains available as an optional preview, not a required step:

solodeveling install --runtime claude-code --project-root PATH
solodeveling install --runtime cursor --dry-run

Other commands

The install flow stays short; project memory and evaluation remain explicit:

solodeveling init
solodeveling validate .
solodeveling eval probe
solodeveling version

Live evaluation can consume model-service usage or API credits, so review Cross-agent evaluation before authorizing a live run.

Security and support boundaries

The npm launcher has no runtime dependencies and no install lifecycle script. On an explicit invocation it selects an exact-version native artifact, downloads only from the versioned GitHub Release, verifies its bundled size and SHA-256, caches it, and executes it without a shell. Windows, macOS, and Linux on x64 and arm64 are release targets only after their CI builds and native smoke tests pass. Unsupported targets fail closed and show the Python-tool fallback.

Solodeveling applies risk-scaled verification and Secure SDLC guidance, but installing it does not make a project categorically secure or compliant. Hashes detect byte changes; they do not by themselves prove publisher identity. No telemetry is collected and no publishing credentials are included.

No tag, GitHub Release, npm package, or PyPI package is created by ordinary CI. External publication requires a reviewed source revision and separate explicit authorization.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.