project-design-skill

project-design

A Claude Skill that assembles a complete planning package for software projects — product design in Phase A, operationalization plus a GitHub bootstrap folder in Phase B, and adaptive revisions in Phase C.

Works for CLI tools, web and SaaS apps, AI agent systems, libraries, and similar projects. Triggers on English and Swedish phrasing equally.

What it produces

Phase A — Product design (delivered to {project}-design/):

• 00-index.md — overview
• 01-whitepaper.md — product description + assumptions for Phase B
• 02-long-horizon.md — coarse plan (phases, milestones)
• 03-short-horizon.md — detail plan, nearest phase
• 04-agent-instructions.md — AI agent instructions

Phase B — Operationalization (after the operator creates the repo and works through a confidentiality checklist):

• 05-engineering-handbook.md — license, branch, commits, PR, release, maintenance
• 06-ci-cd-plan.md — workflows, environments, deploy, rollback, observability
• 07-agent-loop.md — loop cadence, reporting format, escalation, termination
• bootstrap/ — importable repo artifacts (LICENSE, README skeleton, .gitignore, .editorconfig, CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, SECURITY.md, GitHub workflows, issue/PR templates, labels, branch-protection JSON, dependabot config, stack-specific files)

Phase C — Iteration: detects an existing {project}-design/ and proposes scope- delta-driven revisions, with recommendations both upward and downward in strictness level.

How it differs from a linear interview

Brainstorming in Phase A is adaptive mapping (see references/exploration-map.md), not a checklist. Most operationalization questions are assessed silently from the brainstorming output and presented as recommendations at the Phase B handoff, with three explicit exceptions:

• Implementation mode — iterative (design co-evolves with code, squash-merge, Phase C revisions are normal) or spec-first (design locked, granular commits, rebase-merge for release-please, implementer narrates progress for autonomous runs). Decided in Phase A before 03 and 04 are written, since the mode shapes their detail level.
• License — always decided explicitly in Phase A. Has legal and ecosystem consequences the operator must own.
• Repo namespace, visibility, and any identifier disclosure — clarified explicitly in the Phase A → Phase B confidentiality checklist before anything is committed to a repository.

The skill maintains a running list of open questions and audits them before any major batch generation, so the operator doesn’t have to backtrack through the conversation to verify that nothing was missed.

Identity neutrality

All generated documents default to identity-neutral placeholders (operator, alice, bob, acme-org, example.com). Real identifiers appear in committed artifacts only after explicit confirmation in the confidentiality checklist — mention in conversation or memory is not consent to publish.

Platform assumption

GitHub. All repo artifacts are generated in GitHub format (Actions YAML, gh- compatible JSON). Deliberate choice for simplicity; porting to GitLab or similar is left to the operator if needed.

Installation

/plugin marketplace add alfred-intelligence/claude-marketplace
/plugin install project-design@alfred

The skill expects present_files to be available for delivering the generated package.

Repository layout

project-design-skill/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── plugin.json
├── skills/
│   └── project-design/
│       ├── SKILL.md                              skill manifest + body
│       └── references/
│           ├── agent-instruction-patterns.md
│           ├── agent-loop-templates.md
│           ├── bootstrap-artifacts.md
│           ├── brainstorming-techniques.md
│           ├── ci-cd-templates.md
│           ├── document-templates.md
│           ├── engineering-handbook-templates.md
│           ├── exploration-map.md
│           └── silent-assessment.md
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. For non-trivial changes, open an issue first to discuss.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

This site is open source. Improve this page.