claude-scaffolding

Portable Claude Code configuration: 11 agents, 35 skills, 18 commands, 9 hooks, spec-driven workflows. Installs as a Claude Code plugin.

Overview

claude-scaffolding is a portable, markdown-only Claude Code configuration. It provides multi-agent orchestration, a library of reusable skills, guardrail hooks, and spec-driven workflows — everything ships as plain markdown and runs entirely on the Claude Code runtime, with no backend, database, or long-running process required.

Why use this

• Spec-driven workflows — OpenSpec-style specs keep work grounded and reproducible.
• 11 specialized agents — analyst, architect, developer, reviewer, debugger, and more, each with a focused role.
• Parallel multi-agent orchestration — fan out work across agents and coordinate results.
• Opinionated guardrail hooks — 9 safety and lifecycle hooks block destructive commands and enforce conventions.
• Extensible & self-improving — /create-skill scaffolds your own scaffolding-compatible skills, and /learn closes the loop by distilling reusable insights from finished conversations.
• Zero backend required — pure markdown and Claude Code runtime; no database, server, or process to run.

Install

1. /plugin marketplace add komluk/scaffolding
2. /plugin install scaffolding@komluk-scaffolding
3. /reload-plugins                       ← REQUIRED: Claude Code does not hot-reload the agent registry

Optionally, run /init-scaffolding once per project to create .scaffolding/ and copy CLAUDE.md into the repo (see Per-project setup). Then start delegating: Task(subagent_type="scaffolding:developer", prompt="...").

Without /reload-plugins the subagent_type registry is not refreshed after install — Task(subagent_type="scaffolding:developer") will return Agent type not found. Restarting claude works as an alternative.

The installed plugin lives under ~/.claude/plugins/ — primarily in the versioned cache/komluk-scaffolding/ subtree, with marketplaces/komluk-scaffolding/ as the marketplace clone. Default values (pytest, npm test, (project), etc.) are baked in. To override per-project, edit the rendered CLAUDE.md after running /init-scaffolding.

Per-project setup: /init-scaffolding

After the plugin is installed, run /init-scaffolding from the project root. It creates the .scaffolding/ directory structure (agent memory, conversations, worktrees, OpenSpec specs, reports), adds .scaffolding/ to .gitignore, and copies CLAUDE.md + settings.json + hooks/ into the project. Idempotent — safe to re-run; CLAUDE.md and settings.json are always overwritten with the latest plugin version, hook scripts are always copied.

Agent memory

Agents share a file-based, 3-tier memory protocol — all plain markdown under .scaffolding/ of the project. Memory is auto-injected into an agent's context when a task starts: shared tier always, agent tier when the agent name is known, conversation tier when a conversation_id is provided. Each file is capped at 200 lines. Read-only agents (architect, reviewer) cannot write memory — they report findings in their output instead. This protocol is the always-on default; an optional cross-device semantic memory backend adds vector recall on top — enable it per device with /memory enable (see Optional backend-dependent features).

Common gotchas

Agent type 'developer' not found

• Forgot /reload-plugins after install, OR used the bare name. Use scaffolding:developer.

"Claude ignores the delegation protocol"

• Plugin loaded but /reload-plugins was not run after install.

"I installed the plugin, but nothing works in a new session"

• Restart Claude Code entirely — the plugin cache may be stale. /reload-plugins is faster if a session is already active.

Requirements

• git
• Claude Code CLI (https://claude.ai/code)

What's inside

claude-scaffolding/
├── agents/         11 agents (analyst, architect, coordinator, developer,
│                    debugger, devops, gitops, optimizer,
│                    researcher, reviewer, tech-writer)
├── skills/         35 skills (api-design, error-handling, pattern-recognition,
│                    skill-authoring, spec-*, mui-styling, python-patterns,
│                    sofa-search, testing-strategy, ...)
├── commands/       18 slash commands: 8 top-level (context, create-skill,
│                    init-openspec, init-scaffolding, learn, memory, doctor,
│                    sofa) + 10 in `commands/specs/` (apply, archive,
│                    bulk-archive, continue, explore, ff, new, onboard, sync,
│                    verify) — namespaced OpenSpec commands
├── hooks/          9 safety + lifecycle hooks (block-destructive-rm,
│                    block-env-write, pre-commit-validation,
│                    session-start-protocol, memory-project-id, ...)
├── templates/      Shared agent reference docs (output-frontmatter schema,
│                    agents/skills overview, responsibility matrix)
├── validators/     Validation scripts (circuit-breaker, validate-agent-output)
├── output-styles/  output-frontmatter definition
├── workflows/      YAML workflow and coordinate definitions
├── CLAUDE.md       Main project prompt
└── settings.json   Hooks + statusline + permissions

Optional backend-dependent features

A few skills have optional features that can use an external backend if one is available — for example, semantic-memory-store can persist embeddings to a vector store, and ui-ux-pro-max can draw on a local dataset. When no such backend is present, these skills degrade gracefully: the agent skips the relevant section rather than crashing, and all core functionality continues to work as pure markdown.

Cross-device semantic memory (/memory)

The semantic-memory-mcp / semantic-memory-store skills can be backed by a self-hosted mem0 service (PostgreSQL + pgvector, with a local LLM and embeddings via Ollama). When enabled, agents persist and recall insights across sessions and devices through semantic_search / semantic_recall / semantic_store, on top of the always-on file-based memory.

It is opt-in and personal:

/memory enable     # wire the backend into Claude Code (user scope) — run once per device
/memory disable    # disconnect this device (stored memories are kept)
/memory status     # show whether it's wired and reachable

• Off by default. Nothing connects until you run /memory enable. Installing the plugin without a backend simply runs without semantic memory.
• Token-gated. Auth uses a personal bearer token (MEMORY_MCP_TOKEN); the endpoint defaults to your own backend and is overridable via MEMORY_MCP_URL.
• Per-project isolation. The memory-project-id SessionStart hook derives a stable project_id from the git remote, so each repository has its own memory namespace, shared across your devices.
• Graceful fallback. If the backend is unreachable, skills fall back to the file-based .scaffolding/agent-memory/ — agents never block.

Hosting the backend (LXC/VM, Docker compose, Ollama, network egress policy) is outside the plugin; the plugin only consumes the MCP endpoint.

Updating

/plugin update scaffolding@komluk-scaffolding
/reload-plugins

Re-run /init-scaffolding in projects where you want the latest CLAUDE.md and hooks copied in.

Documentation

• docs/adopting-in-legacy-repo.md — how to add this to an existing project that already has its own .claude/
• CHANGELOG.md — release history

Versioning

The project follows SemVer 2.0.0.

Source of truth for the version: .claude-plugin/plugin.json (version field). The git tag MUST match (v${version}) — enforced by release.yml in GitHub Actions.

Version history: CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.