spectre

SPECTRE: A Workflow for Product Builders

Scope → Plan → Execute → Clean → Test → Rebase → Evaluate

SPECTRE is a slash command based workflow for Claude Code designed to help you do ONE THING more, faster, and with higher quality.

🚀 Ship Product Features

SPECTRE's workflow covers the complete software development lifecycle - from scoping a feature, finalizing user flows, writing the technical design, generating tasks, executing the tasks, code review, validating the work, cleaning up and testing the work, and finally generating documentation as Skills your agent auto-loads when relevant.

It has been tested on brand new codebases and codebases with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Its been tested building websites, react native apps, native desktop apps, and personal software.

SPECTRE helps you get higher quality and more consistent results from your coding agent, while they work autonomously for much longer, so 10-100x'ing your typical output feels easy and more importantly, repeatable.

⚡ Quick Start

Within Claude Code

# Add marketplace and install
/plugin marketplace add Codename-Inc/spectre
/plugin install spectre@codename

Then start building:

/spectre:scope

That's it. You just start with 1 command to build features.

Within Codex

npx @codename_inc/spectre install codex

When prompted, choose project to install into the current repo's .codex, or user to install into ~/.codex.

If you choose project, run codex from that repo.

If you choose user, restart or open your normal Codex session.

Then run a Spectre command such as:

scope

Current Codex behavior:

• user scope installs Spectre workflow skills, runtime, agents, hooks, and shared skills under ~/.codex
• project scope installs the same Codex home structure inside ./.codex
• project installs create .spectre/manifest.json and project-local Codex config
• session continuity uses Codex's official SessionStart hook for the visible status line and keeps the latest handoff in a managed AGENTS.override.md block
• learned project skills still live under .agents/skills/ and are synced into Codex config

Capability matrix: docs/codex-capability-matrix.md Session continuity deep dive: docs/codex-sessionstart-memory.md

🔁 How It Works

• run one of the kickoff prompts in Claude Code - /spectre:scope is the main command for building new features, but also /spectre:kickoff for high ambiguity new features (includes web research), /spectre:research for codebase research "how might we build …” style Qs, or /spectre:ux to define user flows, components, and layout for a new feature.

• follow the prompts/instructions to create the related canonical document and Claude Code will suggest the next step in the SPECTRE workflow automatically (e.g., going from scope to plan to tasks and so on)

• turn off auto-compact in Claude Code settings (/config) and run /spectre:handoff when the context window is getting full, then run /clear to start the next session. (/spectre:forget when you are switching gears)

• SPECTRE saves canonical docs to a docs/tasks/{topic}/specs directory, and status updates from /spectre:handoff to docs/tasks/{topic}/session_logs directory. We recommend keeping this directory checked into git to be able to reference docs in the future.

• thats it. scope features, plan features, build features, clean up/test features, document features, learn from features, repeat.

🎯 Core SPECTRE Principles

• Great Inputs → Great Outputs
• Ambiguity is Death
• One Workflow, Every Feature, Any Size, Any Codebase
• Obvious > Clever

👻 SPECTRE Purpose

AI coding is changing product development, but why is it that Claude Code can still go off the rails? Why is it that some developers claim AI has 100x'd their output, while others still complain about the quality of the code it generates?

Let me introduce you to a very simple concept that you need to drill into your head. With coding agents:

💀 AMBIGUITY IS DEATH.

When the scope, ux, and plan are ambiguous, you must rely on the LLM to fill in the blanks. And while sometimes you can get lucky - especially for smaller features - for any real technology or product work, ambiguity is how you end up with spaghetti code, conflicts, and AI slop.

LLMs need specificity. And typically, providing the right level of specificity is a lot of work. Just think about the most detailed spec or technical design you’ve ever written. Takes days and sometimes weeks.

BUT --- you can use LLMs to make it EASY to provide that specificity. And that is exactly what SPECTRE does.

✅ Workflows = Easy Button