Manual install

Install specsmd v2 on a tool that has no plugin marketplace

v2 is marketplace-only as a product: there is no v2 npm CLI. Tools that cannot install from a plugin marketplace still get the same skills by copying them into the project.

After this page, invoke skills by name exactly as in the quickstart.

What you copy

The source is a specs.md checkout on main-v2 (or this documentation’s branch), not the consumer tree and not the v1 npm package.

Copy every directory under plugins/specsmd/skills/ into the consuming project’s .agents/skills/:

# From a consumer project
mkdir -p .agents/skills
cp -R /path/to/specs.md/plugins/specsmd/skills/* .agents/skills/

If you are working inside the specs.md repository itself:

mkdir -p .agents/skills
cp -R plugins/specsmd/skills/* .agents/skills/

You should then have, among others:

.agents/skills/
├── using-specsmd/SKILL.md
├── specsmd-status/SKILL.md
├── specsmd-init/SKILL.md
├── intent-create/SKILL.md
├── work-item-decompose/SKILL.md
├── bolt-plan/SKILL.md
├── bolt-start/SKILL.md
├── bolt-execute/SKILL.md
├── walkthrough-generate/SKILL.md
└── flow-runtime/          # scripts + contract; do not invoke directly

Each skill is invocable by name.

Optional: always-on principles

Append plugins/specsmd/agents-md/AGENTS-fragment.md from the checkout to the project’s AGENTS.md. Create the file if needed; do not overwrite existing project instructions — append.

Tools that also read .claude/skills/

Some editors read .claude/skills/ in addition to .agents/skills/. A symlink is enough:

mkdir -p .claude
ln -s ../.agents/skills .claude/skills

Then initialize

In the coding tool, start a session and invoke specsmd-init. Continue with the quickstart from “Initialize the artifact tree.”

The flow’s scripts run with Node.js. They write only under docs/specsmd/ and install nothing into the project.

Updating

Copy the skills again from a newer checkout to replace .agents/skills/. Project artifacts under docs/specsmd/ are yours; a recopy of skills does not migrate or rewrite them.

v1 users

This path is for the unified plugin only. Legacy flows still install with npx specsmd install or by copying plugins/specsmd-<flow>/skills/ and plugins/specsmd-core/skills/. v2 provides no migration tooling — see Coming from v1.