SDLC orchestration plugin for Claude Code. Drives projects through a structured software development lifecycle — gated opening and closing phases around a continuous Build loop — with company-configurable profiles, compliance gates, and quality enforcement.
No existing tool combines specification-driven development + quality enforcement + compliance gates + company configurability into one executable workflow. This plugin makes the AI-SDLC methodology executable inside Claude Code.
- 9 SDLC phases — Discovery, Requirements, Design, Foundation, the continuous Build loop, Documentation, Deployment, Monitoring, Close & Transfer. The gap where batch Implementation/Quality/Testing used to be is intentional — checking happens per change inside the Build loop, never as a later batch phase.
- Project type routing — testing, deployment, and monitoring adapt automatically based on
project_type(service, app, library, skill, cli) - Company profiles — YAML configs for stack, quality thresholds, compliance, conventions
- 7-gate validation — Integrity, completeness, metrics, compliance, consistency, quality checks at every transition, plus the phase's own exit criteria rendered for the human who signs
- Frozen layers — Token-efficient phase summaries enabling cross-phase context continuity
- 3-tier context architecture — Foundation (always), frozen layers (per-phase), references (on-demand)
- Narrative enhancement — Optional stakeholder-friendly
.narrative.mdcompanions for technical artifacts - Conversational coaching — Adaptive dialogue mode for guided phase completion
- NFR measurement basis enforcement — Every numeric threshold must declare its measurement source; aspirational thresholds require an agreed validation plan in the Build loop
- Test traceability — the Build loop requires scenario-to-requirement mapping and redundancy audit before test execution
- Compliance enforcement — SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS gate definitions
- Skill orchestration — Maps phases to existing skills (
/deep-plan,/deep-implement,/tdd,/code-review,/security-review,/e2e) - State machine — Tracks progress in
.sdlc/state.yamlwith full audit trail - Artifact checksums + dirty tracking — SHA-256 hashes detect changed artifacts; gate checks skip unchanged files for faster validation
- Smart repair — Gate failures on structural issues (missing templates, placeholders) are auto-fixed before escalating to human
- Dependency graph enforcement — Section dependency DAG validated in the Build loop; circular dependencies detected; implementation order enforced
- Multi-perspective review —
/sdlc-reviewwith adversarial, edge-case, and council modes for thorough artifact review - Brainstorming techniques — SCAMPER, reverse brainstorming, constraint removal, and 3 more structured ideation methods with anti-bias protocol
- Brownfield detection — Auto-detects existing codebases and generates workspace analysis before Discovery begins
- Structured error specs — P0/P1 requirements must define Accepts/Returns/Errors explicitly
- Cross-artifact validation — File-level reference checking between artifacts (SHOULD severity)
- Question-to-file audit trail — Open questions written to persistent markdown files for team collaboration
- Test expansion protocol — Healer (diagnose failures), Expander (add edge cases), bug-to-test pipeline (RED first)
- Parallel review resolution — Batch review findings by file, resolve in parallel, re-verify after fix
- Advanced elicitation — Constraint analysis, inverse thinking, pre-mortem, 5 whys, and more for coaching mode
- Phase-aware context — Hooks inject current phase reminders and conventions
- Session health check — Opt-in pre-flight build verification at session start (Build loop) catches broken builds before the agent compounds them with new work
- Visual regression testing — Optional screenshot capture during Build-loop E2E testing with baseline comparison (manual or pixel-diff)
- Single-change guardrail — Explicit constraint preventing simultaneous work on multiple specs in the Build loop unless explicitly parallelizable
- Phase-scoped evaluation criteria — Quality rubrics that apply to non-code artifacts (requirements, design, foundation) in addition to code
- Empirical metrics logging — JSONL instrumentation in gates, frozen layer validation, and section evaluation for evidence-based harness optimization
- Document intake — Opt-in Phase 0 corpus analysis for external reference materials (RFPs, API specs, vendor docs, compliance handbooks) with per-document summaries, DOC-NNN traceability IDs, token-budgeted session-start index (Tier 1.5), and Phase 1 requirement-to-source linking
One marketplace add, one install — brings the orchestration commands and the delivery harness:
/plugin marketplace add MCKRUZ/claude-code-sdlc
/plugin install claude-code-sdlc@mckruz
Then, per project: /sdlc-setup initializes .sdlc/ and installs the full delivery harness
(governance CLAUDE.md, .claude/{settings,hooks,agents,skills}, 7 CI workflows in
.github/workflows/ — 5 rail gates plus 2 eval workflows — of which five checks (build-and-test,
spec-gate, grader, correctness-review, security-review) block at merge via the
branch-protection ruleset, and infra/ starters). To add or refresh just the
harness in an existing repo, use /sdlc-harness. Requires Claude Code v2.1.196+ (source: ".").
# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/MCKRUZ/claude-code-sdlc.git
# Symlink to your Claude Code skills directory
# Windows
mklink /D "%USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\claude-code-sdlc" "path\to\claude-code-sdlc"
# macOS/Linux
ln -s /path/to/claude-code-sdlc ~/.claude/skills/claude-code-sdlcThe plugin uses Python scripts via uv:
# Install uv (if not already installed)
pip install uv
# or
brew install uv
# Install script dependencies
cd claude-code-sdlc/scripts
uv sync1. /sdlc-setup → Select profile, initialize .sdlc/ AND install the delivery harness
2. /sdlc → See Phase 0: Discovery guidance
3. Create artifacts → Write problem-statement.md in .sdlc/artifacts/00-discovery/
4. /sdlc-gate → Check if exit criteria are met
5. /sdlc-next → Advance to Phase 1: Requirements
6. /sdlc-status → View progress dashboard
For in-depth technical documentation, see the guides in docs/:
| Guide | Description |
|---|---|
| Architecture | Plugin anatomy, component relationships, data flow diagrams, two-directory model, progressive disclosure strategy |
| Phase Lifecycle | All 9 phases in depth — workflows, artifacts, HITL gates, skills, agents, handoff protocol, project type adaptations |
| Gate System | 7-gate validation — integrity, completeness, metrics, compliance, consistency, quality, exit criteria — severity levels, override protocol |
| Profiles | Schema reference (every field), built-in profiles, custom profile creation, compliance framework integration, evaluation criteria |
| Commands | All 21 slash commands — internal flow, state changes, Python scripts called, error scenarios, examples |
| Agents | 13 custom agents + built-in subagent orchestration, phase-to-agent mapping, parallel execution rules, mandatory spawns |
| State Machine | state.yaml format, transition rules, history tracking, session-handoff.json, the spec backlog |
| Templates & Artifacts | Template directory structure, per-phase artifact details, handoff document protocol, artifact lifecycle |
| Scripts | All Python scripts (incl. phase_model.py, the phase-identity source of truth) — CLI args, inputs/outputs, exit codes, gate implementation details, uv runtime |
| Integrations | How /deep-plan, /deep-implement, /tdd, /code-review map into SDLC phases, artifact transformation pipeline |
| Hooks | Session-start and phase-inject hooks — what they read, what they inject, session continuity, convention reminders |
| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
/sdlc-setup |
Interactive setup wizard — select profile, initialize project |
/sdlc |
Show current phase guidance, next action, required artifacts |
/sdlc-status |
Progress dashboard with phase table and completion % |
/sdlc-gate |
Run 7-gate exit criteria check (does not advance) |
/sdlc-next |
Advance to next phase if all MUST gates pass |
/sdlc-enhance |
Generate narrative companions for stakeholder review (optional) |
/sdlc-coach |
Interactive coaching mode — adaptive dialogue for current phase |
/sdlc-intake |
Catalog and summarize an external document corpus (Phase 0, opt-in) |
/sdlc-brief |
Prep a stakeholder workshop brief from the document corpus |
/sdlc-spec |
Author a ready Build-loop spec (specs/NNNN-name.md) and enforce the Definition of Ready |
/sdlc-phase-report |
Generate phase HTML report with artifact inventory |
/sdlc-review |
Multi-perspective artifact review (council, adversarial, or edge-case modes) |
/sdlc-audit |
Analyze gate effectiveness across completed phases |
/sdlc-feature |
Decompose an epic into channel-aware features and specs (feature-brief.md) |
/sdlc-experience |
Author per-channel journeys, surface layout, and the channel interaction spec |
/sdlc-data |
Author the data contract, data-readiness, and lineage/audit (Data) |
/sdlc-rules |
Capture business rules (BR-NN) and golden scenarios (SCEN-NN) (Bizreq) |
/sdlc-channel |
Bind a spec's channel: and inject that channel's acceptance dimensions |
/sdlc-evals |
Author a versioned golden set next to a spec (wraps the harness eval-builder) |
Full enterprise stack with compliance:
- Stack: C#/.NET 8, Angular 17, SQL Server, Azure
- Quality: 80% coverage minimum, 100% critical paths, TDD required
- Compliance: SOC 2 gates at every phase transition
- Conventions: Conventional commits, immutable patterns, no console.log
- Health check:
dotnet build --no-restore --verbosity quietat session start (Build loop) - Visual verification: Screenshot capture with manual baseline comparison
- Evaluation criteria: Phase-scoped rubrics for requirements (testability, traceability), design (ADR completeness, interface specificity), foundation (section plan verifiability), and Build-loop code (Result pattern, immutable state, FluentValidation, API docs)
Minimal profile for quick start:
- Stack: Configurable (defaults to TypeScript/Node)
- Quality: 60% coverage minimum, no TDD requirement
- Compliance: None
- Conventions: Conventional commits
Python profile for creative-pipeline tooling (ComfyUI technique registry / inventory projects):
- Stack: Python (uv-run scripts), pytest
- Quality: 80% coverage minimum, TDD + code review + security review required, 400-line file cap
- Compliance: None (audit trail kept)
- Evaluation criteria: Registry/profile schema compliance, skill prompt clarity, inventory
resolution via
inventory.resolve(), cross-reference integrity, data freshness
Copy profiles/starter/profile.yaml and modify for your stack. Validate with:
uv run scripts/validate_profile.py profiles/my-profile/profile.yamlSee profiles/_schema.yaml for the full schema.
Phase 0 captures project_type, which is stored in state.yaml and controls how testing (in the Build loop), Deployment, and Monitoring execute:
| Type | Description | Testing (Build loop) | Deployment (8) | Monitoring (9) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
service |
Backend API / server process | Unit + integration + E2E + API contract tests | Staging server deploy + DB migrations | Full infrastructure monitoring + alerting |
app |
User-facing application with UI | Same as service | Same as service | Same as service |
library |
Shared code package / SDK | Unit tests for public API surface | Package registry publish | Download counts + issue triage |
skill |
Claude Code skill / AI plugin | Scenario-based testing against requirement list | File distribution + install verification | Qualitative feedback channels + issue triage |
cli |
Command-line tool | Unit + integration + invocation tests | Binary distribution | Same as library |
| # | Phase | Primary Skills | Key Artifacts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Discovery | /plan |
problem-statement.md, constitution.md (incl. project_type) |
| 1 | Requirements | /deep-project |
requirements.md, non-functional-requirements.md (with Measurement Basis) |
| 2 | Design | /deep-plan |
design-doc.md, ADRs |
| 3 | Foundation | /deep-plan |
foundation-report.md, risk-tier-map.md, cadence-plan.md, build-handoff.md |
| build | Build Loop | /tdd, /code-review, /security-review, /e2e |
specs/NNNN-*.md, phase7-handoff.md (no batch gate — human declares feature-complete) |
| 7 | Documentation | /update-docs |
README, RUNBOOK |
| 8 | Deployment | CI/CD | release notes (approach varies by project_type) |
| 9 | Monitoring | Manual | monitoring config (approach varies by project_type) |
| close | Close & Transfer | — | final-handoff-report.md, harness-audit.md, close-gate-evidence.md, access-revocation-checklist.md |
Every phase transition runs through seven gates:
- Integrity — Required artifacts exist and are well-formed
- Completeness — Artifacts contain all required sections, no placeholders
- Metrics — Quantitative thresholds met (coverage, file size)
- Compliance — Correct labeling (priorities, ADR status, compliance mapping)
- Consistency — Locked metrics checked against frozen layers from prior phases
- Quality — Phase-scoped evaluation criteria from profile (e.g., requirement testability in Phase 1, ADR completeness in Phase 2, code patterns in the Build loop)
- Exit criteria — The phase's own prose exit conditions from the registry, rendered as review items for the human who signs the advance
Gates 1–6 pass or fail. Gate 7 always reports REVIEW: its conditions are judgments ("The rails are proven, not just present") that no script can settle, so it shows the approver the checklist rather than deciding for them. Phases 0–2 declare no prose conditions, so Gate 7 is silent there.
All gate results are logged to .sdlc/metrics/gate-log.jsonl for empirical tracking of gate effectiveness.
Gates have severity levels:
- MUST — Blocks transition if failed
- SHOULD — Generates warning
- MAY — Informational
claude-code-sdlc/
├── plugin.json # Plugin manifest
├── SKILL.md # Main skill entry point
├── commands/ # 21 slash commands (/sdlc, /sdlc-setup, /sdlc-status, /sdlc-next, /sdlc-gate, /sdlc-enhance, /sdlc-coach, /sdlc-review, /sdlc-intake, /sdlc-brief, /sdlc-spec, /sdlc-phase-report, /sdlc-audit, /sdlc-feature, /sdlc-experience, /sdlc-data, /sdlc-rules, /sdlc-channel, /sdlc-evals, /sdlc-harness, /sdlc-upgrade)
├── agents/ # 13 agents (orchestrator, requirements-analyst, compliance-checker, section-evaluator, narrative-enhancer, gate-repair, multi-reviewer, discovery-analyst, feature-architect, visual-designer, conversation-designer, data-analyst, bizreq-analyst)
├── profiles/ # Company/stack YAML profiles
├── channels/ # Channel descriptor library (ag-ui, voice, chat) + schema
├── phases/ # Phase definitions (0,1,2,3,build,7,8,9,close)
├── references/ # Progressive disclosure docs
├── templates/ # Artifact templates
├── scripts/ # Python automation (uv)
└── hooks/ # PowerShell hooks for context injection
This plugin follows ADR-001: claude-code-sdlc is a Claude Code plugin that executes AI-SDLC methodology.
- AI-SDLC = the methodology (phases, validation, templates)
- claude-code-sdlc = the execution engine (commands, hooks, profiles, scripts)
- The plugin references AI-SDLC patterns but adapts them for Claude Code's command/hook/agent system
- Fork the repo
- Create a feature branch:
feat/my-feature - Follow the conventional commit format:
type: description - Submit a PR with a clear description
MIT