Overview

Getting Started

misterspec ships as a single static Go binary — no runtime dependency beyond a Go toolchain to build it, or a pre-built release binary you can download directly.

Install

Download a pre-built binary for your OS/architecture from the latest release — no Go toolchain or repository clone needed. Pick the one that matches your machine, rename it to misterspec, then:

chmod +x misterspec
./misterspec --help

Or build from source, with Go 1.23.4 or newer:

git clone https://github.com/mottamarcio/misterspec.git
cd misterspec
go build -o misterspec ./cmd/misterspec
./misterspec --help

--help intentionally shows only init, --version, and --update — misterspec's own internal, machine-facing command tree is hidden from normal use (see the Command Reference for the full, documented surface, public and internal alike).

Bootstrap a project

Inside any repository you want to manage with misterspec, run:

misterspec init

With no --agent flag and an interactive terminal, this launches a short setup flow: it inspects the target directory, warns you if it's non-empty or already initialized, lets you pick which coding agent to install Skills for, shows a preview of exactly what will be written, and reports the result. To skip the interactive flow entirely (for example, in a script or CI):

misterspec init --agent claude-code --dir ./my-project

This creates .misterspec/config.yaml, a starter ai/ directory, and installs the framework's canonical Skills into the chosen agent's own recognized integration location — see Multi-Agent Skill Integration for the full list of supported agents and exactly where each one's Skills land.

Your first few commands

Once initialized, everything else happens through your coding agent's own installed Skills (slash commands like /mister-constitution, /mister-specify, /mister-implement) — misterspec's own deterministic commands run underneath them automatically. To confirm the project is in a healthy state at any point:

misterspec internal status --dir ./my-project

{"ok":true,"counts":{"program":0,"feature":0,"spec":0,"knowledge":0,"learning":0,"task":0},"specs":{},"structural_errors":0}

See the full Spec-Driven Workflow walkthrough next for exactly which command drives each stage, from a blank repository to a validated, implemented Spec.

Staying up to date

misterspec --version
misterspec --update

--update checks GitHub for a newer release, asks for confirmation before changing anything, verifies the download against a published SHA-256 checksum, then atomically replaces the binary — and, inside an already-initialized project, reinstalls Skills to match. See the --update reference for the full behavior.