Reference
The Specify CLI (specify) manages the full lifecycle of Spec-Driven Development — from project initialization to workflow automation. This section is the detailed reference for the CLI's commands and primitives, plus the agentic /speckit.* processes your coding agent runs.
Core Commands
The foundational commands for creating and managing Spec Kit projects. Initialize a new project with the necessary directory structure, templates, and scripts. Verify that your system has the required tools installed. Check version and system information.
Integrations
Integrations connect Spec Kit to your AI coding agent. Each integration sets up the appropriate command files and directory structures for a specific agent. Only one integration is active per project at a time, and you can switch between them at any point.
Extensions
Extensions add new capabilities to Spec Kit — domain-specific commands, external tool integrations, quality gates, and more. They are discovered through catalogs and can be installed, updated, enabled, disabled, or removed independently. Multiple extensions can coexist in a single project.
Presets
Presets customize how Spec Kit works — overriding command files, template files, and script files without changing any tooling. They let you enforce organizational standards, adapt the workflow to your methodology, or localize the entire experience. Multiple presets can be stacked with priority ordering to layer customizations.
Artifacts
Artifacts are the commands, templates, and scripts a project exposes, whichever layer contributes them. The specify artifact command group is the read-only introspection surface over that inventory — a flat list of everything visible, plus the full composition stack behind any single entry, including which layer wins and which layers are hidden.
Workflows
Workflows automate multi-step Spec-Driven Development processes into repeatable sequences. They chain commands, prompts, shell steps, and human checkpoints together, with support for conditional logic, loops, fan-out/fan-in, and the ability to pause and resume from the exact point of interruption.
Bundles
Bundles compose existing extensions, presets, workflows, and steps into a single, versioned, installable unit. Rather than adding new behavior, a bundle curates a stack of primitives — everything a team or role needs — and installs it in one step through each component's own machinery, with version pinning, conflict checks, and provenance tracking for clean updates and removal.
Agentic Commands
The sections above cover primitives managed by the specify CLI. The following
are independent processes your coding agent runs, not terminal commands. The
references use /speckit.* notation; see
Command invocation for your agent's syntax.
For guided examples, start with SDD,
bug fixing, or idea assessment.
Agentic SDD
The /speckit.* slash commands that drive the core Spec-Driven Development process your coding agent runs step by step: constitution, specify, clarify, plan, checklist, tasks, analyze, implement, and converge. Run them in order, adding the clarify/checklist/analyze quality gates for anything with meaningful ambiguity.
Agentic Bug Fix
The bundled bug extension adds a three-step bug triage process — assess, fix, and validate — with each bug tracked in its own directory under .specify/bugs/. Install it with specify extension add bug.
Agentic Idea Assessment
The bundled, opt-in assess extension evaluates an idea through intake,
research, definition, shaping, and a go / needs-clarification / kill decision.
It works without source code and does not require or automatically start SDD.
Install it with specify extension add assess.