Spec-driven development template for Claude Code and Copilot

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A chat forgets. FeatherSpec doesn't.

You describe what you want, your agent turns it into a spec with testable acceptance criteria, then into a plan of baby steps — and only then writes code. Spec, plan, decisions and progress all live on disk as Markdown in your repository, so the next session, the next teammate, and the next tool pick up exactly where you left off.

Twelve /sdd-* commands drive that loop, and they behave identically in Claude Code and in GitHub Copilot, because both tools execute the same files.

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Start in two minutes

(These three steps are the greenfield path — adopting an existing repository? Jump to Already have a codebase?.)

1 · Get the template

Click Use this template on GitHub — or clone it:

git clone https://github.com/GregorBiswanger/featherspec.git my-project

The clone brings this repository's commit history along with a remote pointing back here. For your own project you want neither: delete the .git folder (rm -rf .git, or Remove-Item -Recurse -Force .git in PowerShell) and run git init.

Have Node.js? Then degit saves you that cleanup — it downloads only the current file state, so there is no history and no .git folder to detach in the first place:

npx degit GregorBiswanger/featherspec my-project

2 · Open it in your assistant

Claude Code

cd my-project
claude

CLAUDE.md imports AGENTS.md at session start, so the rules are always loaded. Type / and the sdd- commands are there.

GitHub Copilot (VS Code)

Open the project folder itself — not a parent folder, or the slash commands won't show up. Open Copilot Chat (Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + I), switch to Agent mode, and optionally pick the SpecDrivenAgent persona. Type / — same commands, same behaviour.

3 · Run the wizard once

/sdd-setup

It asks which language your documentation should be written in (answer English, Deutsch, Français, … — everything the workflow writes from then on follows it), then a handful of questions about the project. It seeds the Memory Bank, captures a first architecture snapshot, and agrees the working rules with you: the quality gate that runs after every implementation step until it is clean, and the TDD working mode — proposed in plain language, confirmed by you, never assumed.

That is the entire installation. Nothing to build, nothing to run.

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Already have a codebase?

FeatherSpec adopts existing software as a first-class path — from a single service up to large enterprise repositories: the scan's worklist gate is the cost dial (deep-scan the core, defer the periphery, rescan later with a focus path).

Step 0 — get the files into your repository. An existing project does not start from "Use this template"; copy the template's files in instead. Fetch the template next to your project:

npx degit GregorBiswanger/featherspec featherspec-tmp

Then copy into your repo: AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .claude/, .github/prompts/, .github/instructions/, .github/agents/, .specs/, .memory-bank/ — plus .vscode/settings.json and the template's .gitignore entries (merge both if you already have your own). Nothing else: no build, no dependencies.

Then run /sdd-setup and answer existing software — the wizard offers a deep architecture scan that reads your code (recursively, with isolated scout agents), lets you confirm the module boundaries it found, and distills a lean fingerprint into the architecture: snapshot. It is resumable at any point, re-runnable whenever the snapshot feels stale (/sdd-architecture-scan, optionally with a focus path), and it cleans up after itself.

The payoff: agents jump straight to the right files instead of exploring — with verified conventions and traps as grounds for better technical decisions — and the documentation can never flood the context window: always loaded is only the ~200-line constitution, while per-module depth lives in ≤ 40-line maps that load only when their module is touched.

And it keeps what it can see apart from why it was meant that way. An observed pattern always carries an evidence path; its reason is recorded only when a source states it — an ADR, a requirement, or you — and stays unknown when none does, instead of being filled with a plausible guess that the next session inherits as fact. Where two documents give the assistant incompatible reasons for the same thing, it keeps both and picks neither. You are asked about an unknown reason once, bundled at the end of the scan, and "later" is a complete answer. The full walkthrough lives in the wiki: Adopting an Existing Codebase.

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Already running FeatherSpec? Updates are built in

Since v1.2.0 the template is versioned (tags & releases), and projects created from it update safely — however customized. Projects adopted before v1.2.0 just copy two files from the current template into their repo:

• .claude/commands/sdd-featherspec-update.md
• .github/prompts/sdd-featherspec-update.prompt.md (skip if you removed the Copilot half; restart VS Code afterwards if you kept it)

Then run /sdd-featherspec-update. It detects your version (even unstamped and heavily customized projects), fetches the latest release, previews every change before writing, and migrates around your customizations instead of over them: your specs, Memory Bank and edits are provably untouched, conflicts are asked — never decided — and a backup branch guards the whole run. /sdd-featherspec-update check alone answers "which version am I on?". Details: Updating & Versioning.

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The loop

flowchart LR
  S["💬 /sdd-specify<br/>interview → spec"] --> K["🔍 /sdd-clarify<br/>adversarial pass"]
  K --> P["🗺️ /sdd-plan<br/>spec → baby steps"]
  P --> R["👀 you read the plan<br/>cheapest review there is"]
  R --> A["📂 /sdd-lifecycle<br/>backlog → active"]
  A --> I["⚙️ implement<br/>step by step"]
  I --> C["✅ /sdd-compile<br/>verdict + evidence"]
  C --> L["📦 /sdd-lifecycle<br/>active → done"]
  L -.->|next iteration| S

The spec says what and why. The plan says how, in steps small enough to verify one at a time. Both are files, both are versioned, and a traceability table connects every acceptance criterion to the steps, the code paths and the test that fulfil it.

Two of those boxes are not commands, and that is the point. /sdd-clarify reads your finished spec as a stranger would — it cannot use the conversation that wrote it, which is precisely why it finds what that conversation missed. And the plan review is yours: a wrong step costs hundreds of lines, a wrong line costs one, so a 200-line plan is the cheapest thing you will read all cycle.

Not every change deserves this. A typo, a config value, a one-line fix with an obvious test: take the fast path, say that you took it, and move on. The ceremony serves the method; it is not the method.

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See it work — a 5-minute example

A tiny service that splits a restaurant bill. No database, no frontend, no login — just enough to watch one full SDD cycle go by.

① Say what you want — not how

/sdd-specify A small service that splits a restaurant bill fairly across several people.
A user gives three things: the bill amount, a tip percentage and the number of people.
The service returns what each person pays in total, and the overall tip amount.

Notice what is not in there: no "build a REST API", no Express, no endpoint paths. Only the problem. The agent now interviews you — one question at a time — about users, scope, edge cases and acceptance criteria, then writes:

.specs/backlog/0001-bill-splitter.md

② Add the product rules only you can decide

As a follow-up message in the same chat:

Add these rules to the spec:
- 0 or fewer people returns a clear error, never a calculation.
- A negative tip percentage is rejected. 0 percent is allowed.
- A bill amount of 0 is allowed and yields 0 per person.
- Leftover rounding cents go to the first person, so the sum matches the total exactly.

That last rule is the point of the whole exercise. It is a product decision — no model can guess it, and no developer should invent it. In the spec it becomes a testable criterion:

AC-004: The service shall return per-person amounts that sum to the bill total exactly.

Note the shape. That rule is always true — it has no trigger and no starting point, so writing it as "given a bill of 100 across 3 people, when…" would quietly shrink an invariant into one example, and one example is what would get built. Criteria come in five shapes for exactly this reason: always-true, event, state, unwanted behaviour, optional feature.

③ Let a second pair of eyes attack the spec

/sdd-clarify

This reads your finished spec as a stranger — no conversation history, no benefit of the doubt — and returns six lists: contradictions, terms you used in two senses, criteria nothing can decide, implementation details posing as intent, failure modes you never named, and assumptions posing as decisions. It does not fix them. It ends with one question: the thing whose being wrong would cost the most.

Thirty seconds of reading here is the cheapest ambiguity you will ever remove. Left alone, every one of those gaps gets silently resolved by the planner's best guess and hardened into numbered steps.

④ Let the agent plan the how

/sdd-plan Build it as a minimal HTTP service on Node.js with the built-in http module, no
frameworks. One POST endpoint /split. The calculation lives in its own testable module.
Unit tests with the built-in node:test runner. No database, no build step.

This writes 0001-bill-splitter.plan.md right next to the spec: numbered baby steps (T-001, T-002, …), each with a Verify: line you can actually run, plus a traceability table and a session-handoff block. Then it stops — planning never touches code.

⑤ Read the plan

Now open 0001-bill-splitter.plan.md and actually read it. This is the highest-value review minute in the whole cycle, and it is the one everybody skips.

You are not hunting for defects. You are checking that you and the agent agree on the why and on the order — that step three really does depend on step two, that nothing important is missing, that the risky part comes first. A wrong step produces hundreds of wrong lines; a wrong line produces one. Two hundred lines of plan beats two thousand lines of diff.

Say which steps look wrong before anything is implemented. Approving the plan approves the document, not the start of work — implementation begins on your explicit go ("Implement T-001"), and that go also moves the pair into .specs/active/: implementation happens there, not in the backlog.

⑥ Implement, step by step

Implement T-001.

With the default TDD working mode, a new behaviour starts as a test you get to see fail — and the agent stops after writing it, waiting for your go before any implementation. The agent then does one focused change, runs its Verify: line, and writes the result into the step's Verified: field — the command it ran and what came back — before it ticks the box. No recorded run, no tick: that one rule is what keeps a plan from becoming a list of good intentions. It records which files it touched in the same change set as the code, and refreshes .memory-bank/activeContext.md in that same change set, so the dashboard never lags the work. Before anything is called done, it reconciles plan, Memory Bank, and code — a step whose status did not move is not finished, whatever the code looks like. Repeat until the steps are done. Close a session mid-way and the next one resumes from the plan file, not from your memory.

⑦ Check it against your own criteria

/sdd-compile

You get a readiness brief that opens with a verdict — READY (with declared manual checks counted), NOT READY, or NOT READY — unverified — followed by every acceptance criterion marked satisfied or pending with evidence, the open plan steps, whether the docs are in sync, and the next three actions.

Evidence means a test name and its output, or a command and its output. Not a step number, and not a sentence describing the code. If the suite did not run, the verdict is unverified no matter how good the criteria look — an agent grading its own homework is the one thing this brief exists to prevent.

The important discipline: you check against the criteria you wrote, not against a gut feeling. If "actually I'd also like X" comes up now, that is not a bug — it was never in the spec. That is the next iteration.

⑧ Close the loop

/sdd-lifecycle

Spec and plan part ways here, deliberately. The spec moves into .specs/done/ and stays a living document — the starting point for iteration two, which runs faster because the context is already written down. The plan is frozen into .specs/plan-archive/ under a dated name, linked from the spec's **Plan:** line and its ## Plan history: one immutable plan per iteration, never deleted — so a later change can trace exactly what each iteration built, down to the tests to retire when a requirement goes away. The agent verifies the moved files really left their old folder before proposing the commit.

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The twelve commands

Command	What it does
/sdd-overview	Where am I? Workflow map, current spec status, command list
/sdd-setup	One-time wizard: doc language, Memory Bank, architecture snapshot, working agreements
/sdd-specify	Adaptive product-owner interview → a lean, testable spec
/sdd-clarify	Adversarial pass over a spec: contradictions, ambiguity, untestable criteria, implementation posing as intent, missing failure modes
/sdd-plan	Spec → a persisted plan of baby steps, with research and traceability
/sdd-compile	Readiness check: verdict, evidence per acceptance criterion, tests, docs sync
/sdd-lifecycle	Move specs between backlog/, active/, done/ — archiving the plan at completion
/sdd-architecture-update	Detect structural drift, update the snapshot (asks first)
/sdd-architecture-scan	Deep, resumable scan of an existing codebase → architecture fingerprint
/sdd-style-update	Capture a coding-style preference so it sticks
/sdd-featherspec-update	Check your template version and update safely — customizations preserved
/sdd-clean	Keep the persistent context lean: dedupe, drop stale content, compact — with a token report

New to it? Just run /sdd-overview.

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What ends up in your repo

AGENTS.md              the constitution — rules, doc language, template version, architecture snapshot
CLAUDE.md              one line: @AGENTS.md
CHANGELOG.md           the template's release history (snapshot at adoption)

.claude/commands/      the twelve workflow bodies (Claude runs them directly)
.claude/rules/         path-scoped craft rules, loaded when a matching file is read
.claude/settings.json  auto memory off, so the Memory Bank is the only project memory
.github/prompts/       thin loaders so Copilot reaches the same bodies
.github/instructions/  thin loaders so Copilot gets the path-scoped rules too
.github/agents/        the Copilot persona, plus the scan's scout agent in VS Code dialect
.vscode/settings.json  Copilot wiring: instructions/prompts locations, local memory tool off

.specs/                backlog/ · active/ · done/ · plan-archive/ — specs, plans, frozen plan history (ships empty)
.memory-bank/          projectbrief · systemPatterns (decisions, patterns, knowledge records) · techContext · activeContext

A deep scan may add one more: .architecture/ — optional curated per-module maps, created only when the snapshot's line cap would otherwise evict navigation detail.

Everything mutable lives in AGENTS.md and the two data folders. Workflow bodies exist exactly once, under .claude/commands/; .github/prompts/ holds thin pointers to them.

There is one deliberate exception, and it is labelled everywhere it occurs: a path-scoped rule only loads once a matching file has been read, so a brand-new spec or plan would be written without its rule in context. The commands that create those files restate three essentials inline, and each rule file says why. Don't "clean up" that duplication — it is load-bearing. Where a copy exists, it names AGENTS.md as the winner.

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Why one template for two tools

• VS Code Copilot reads most of Claude Code's configuration. AGENTS.md natively, via chat.useAgentsMdFile; the path-scoped rules through six thin loaders in .github/instructions/, whose applyTo globs mirror each rule's paths: — the rule text itself stays single-source under .claude/rules/. FeatherSpec leans on the overlap instead of maintaining two copies.
• Workflows are commands, not skills. A skill advertises itself to the model on every request; a command is only ever run when you type it. Ten workflows sitting in every system prompt is a cost with no upside here.
• Only the entry point differs. .claude/commands/<name>.md holds the body; .github/prompts/<name>.prompt.md is a thin pointer to it (its frontmatter mirrors the body's — declared in AGENTS.md, which wins on divergence). One body to edit, two tools served.

The full interop matrix spells out exactly what each tool reads, with caveats and sources.

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Learn more

Everything beyond this page lives in the Wiki:

Page	What's in it
Getting Started	Setup for both tools, verifying what actually loaded
Commands	Every /sdd-* command in detail
Updating & Versioning	Check your version, update safely, what never gets touched
Specify Method	The interview model behind /sdd-specify — origin and deliberate deviations
Specs & Plans	Document structure, lifecycle, traceability
Memory Bank	The four files and what belongs in each
Interop Matrix	What Copilot reads from .claude/, with sources
Configuration	Shared vs. local settings, auto memory, MCP, hooks
Extending FeatherSpec	Add your own commands and rules
Hands-On Walkthrough	The full workshop exercise, PO/Dev in pairs
Troubleshooting	Commands not showing up, rules not applying
Committing to One Tool	Strip out the other tool later, mechanically

Coming from copilot-spec-driven-template? See Migration.

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