Overview
spec-driven-development is an open-source frontend skill for Claude Code and compatible agents, published by addyosmani. Its author describes it as: “Creates specs before coding. Use when starting a new project, feature, or significant change and no specification exists yet. Use when drafting a PRD or requirements document with objectives and scope, or when require…”. The project has 98k stars on GitHub and is available under the MIT license. Add it to your setup with `/plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills`.
What spec-driven-development does
Write a structured specification before writing any code. The spec is the shared source of truth between you and the human engineer — it defines what we're building, why, and how we'll know it's done. Code without a spec is guessing.
What’s inside
The SKILL.md for spec-driven-development is organised into these sections:
- Overview
- When to Use
- The Gated Workflow
- Phase 0: Scope Check
- Phase 1: Specify
- Phase 2: Plan
- Phase 3: Tasks
- Phase 4: Implement
- Keeping the Spec Alive
- Common Rationalizations
- Red Flags
- Verification
Installation
Add spec-driven-development to your agent with:
/plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skillsReview a skill’s source before installing it — skills can instruct your agent to run commands. This command comes from the skill’s public repository, which is the source of truth for setup steps. New to skills? Read how to install Claude Code skills.
Supported agents
- Claude Code — ships a claude code plugin marketplace
- Codex — declared in the repository topics
- Cursor — declared in the repository topics
- Antigravity — declared in the repository topics
License
spec-driven-development is published under the MIT license.
Strengths
- Clear MIT license — safe to read and adapt within its terms
- Ships in addyosmani/agent-skills, an established project with 97,992 GitHub stars
- Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Antigravity
- Actively maintained — repository updated in the last 30 days
- Its repository gained 16,916 GitHub stars over the last 52 days
Author
Topics
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Frequently asked questions
- What does spec-driven-development do?
- Creates specs before coding. Use when starting a new project, feature, or significant change and no specification exists yet. Use when drafting a PRD or requirements document with objectives and scope, or when requirements are unclear, ambiguous, or only exist as a vague idea. Use when a single requirement spans several independently testable capabilities and needs decomposing into a capability map of modules before specifying.
- How do I install spec-driven-development?
- Run /plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills in your agent, then reload your skills. Review the source at https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills before installing.
- Is spec-driven-development free to use?
- Yes. spec-driven-development is free and open source under the MIT license, so you can read, run, and adapt it within that license's terms.
- Which agents does spec-driven-development work with?
- spec-driven-development lists Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Antigravity — named in its SKILL.md, its plugin marketplace or its repository topics. Skills use the portable SKILL.md format, so other agents that read that format may load it too.
- Where does spec-driven-development come from?
- spec-driven-development ships inside addyosmani/agent-skills, a repository that contains 26 catalogued skills in total. The repository's 97,992 GitHub stars apply to that whole collection, not to this skill on its own.
