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artifact-driven-dev artifact-driven-dev

Hold the decisions you've made. Check them. Turn them into code.

artifact-driven-dev (ArDD)

ArDD is a Claude Code skill pack for artifact-driven development: a small set of living documents (.project/artifacts/) holds the decisions you've actually made, and slash commands check them for consistency and turn them into plans, task lists, and code. It's a workflow, not a generator — you refine the artifacts iteratively, and everything downstream is derived from them.

Is it for you? ArDD earns its overhead where the codebase can't serve as an implicit spec — greenfield work, or a major pivot away from the patterns the code currently shows. On a mature, consistent codebase a solid CLAUDE.md often buys more for less. The honest version: When artifacts earn their keep.

New to ArDD?

  1. Concepts — the mental model in one page
  2. Example — what the files actually look like
  3. Install — one command for a new or existing project
  4. Then the guide that matches your situation:
Your situation Guide
Starting from scratch — no code, just an idea Greenfield project
Code exists; bringing it under ArDD Existing project
Set up and shipping — the day-to-day loop The core loop
Coming from Spec Kit Coming from Spec Kit

Going deeper

Topic Doc
Which of the four checking skills you want Checking skills
Background runs, worktrees, parallel execution, merge conflicts Parallel work
Mirroring the feature register to GitHub Issues Tracker sync
Rendering artifacts as Mermaid diagrams Diagrams

Reference

What Where
Every skill, one page each — usage, reads/writes, behavior Skills reference
.project/ file formats, frontmatter schemas, status enums Project files
The constitution workflow knobs (workflow_mode, delegation, …) Configuration
The installed helper scripts skills shell out to Scripts

Why things are the way they are — the decision records — live in the repository under docs/decisions/. They're source-repo development history rather than user documentation, so they're kept out of this site.

The short version of the workflow

/ardd-init                  # once: seed artifacts (interview or codebase survey)
/ardd-refine <artifact>     # capture decisions as you make them
/ardd-backlog <idea>        # log feature ideas the moment you have them
/ardd-feedback <notes>      # capture what you notice using the built thing
/ardd-plan [<slug> ...]     # draft plan → approval checkpoint → tasks file
/ardd-implement             # execute tasks; offers background delegation
/ardd-status                # where do things stand? (auto-runs after most skills)

This site renders the repository's docs/ directory. The repo's README and USAGE hold the GitHub-facing equivalents of this page.