Using the Plugin

Complete Workflow

Getting Started: Project Setup (Optional but Recommended)

Before creating stories, establish your project foundation:

1. Initialize Project: /sdd:project-init

   • Creates directory structure (/docs/project-context/, /docs/stories/)
   • Sets up context documents (technical stack, coding standards, development process)
   • Customizes templates based on your tech stack

2. Create Project Brief: /sdd:project-brief [title]

   • Defines project objectives and scope
   • Breaks down features into multiple related stories
   • Documents story dependencies and implementation order
   • Provides comprehensive story definitions with acceptance criteria

Note: These setup commands are optional. You can jump straight to story creation with smart defaults, but project setup provides better context-aware behavior.

Iterative Phase Planning (Optional)

For ongoing projects with multiple development cycles:

Plan Development Phases: /sdd:project-phase [phase_name]

• Interactive planning for next development phase
• Gathers user input on desired features and improvements
• Analyzes completed work and current project state
• Creates phase-specific documentation and story queues
• Organizes features by iteration, extension, and foundation categories
• Requires user approval before creating documentation

When to use phases:

• Planning next iteration after completing initial stories
• Organizing multiple related features into cohesive releases
• Managing long-term projects with distinct development cycles
• Coordinating feature rollout with dependencies

Story Development Workflow (9 Steps)

1. Create Story: Define what you're building
2. Start Development: Create branch and setup
3. Implement: Generate code with AI assistance
4. Save: Commit with formatted messages
5. Review: Quality checks and refactoring
6. QA: Automated testing
7. Validate: Final checks before shipping
8. Ship: Deploy to production
9. Complete: Archive story with retrospective and learnings

Workflow Automation with /sdd:story-flow

The /sdd:story-flow command automates the entire story lifecycle, executing all 9 steps sequentially with a single command. This provides:

• Time Savings: Run the complete workflow (new → start → implement → review → qa → validate → save → ship → complete) with one command
• Complete Documentation: Automatically captures retrospective, lessons learned, and metrics after deployment
• Consistency: Ensures all quality gates are executed in the correct order
• Flexibility: Use --start-at and --stop-at to run specific portions of the workflow
• Control: Interactive mode (default) pauses between steps; use --auto flag for full automation
• Resume Capability: Resume from any step if interrupted or after fixing issues
• Error Handling: Automatically halts on test or validation failures with clear recovery options

Examples:

# Full automated workflow from new story
/sdd:story-flow "Add user authentication"

# Resume existing story from QA step in auto mode
/sdd:story-flow STORY-2025-001 --start-at=qa --auto

# Partial workflow (stop before shipping)
/sdd:story-flow "Fix responsive layout" --stop-at=review

Command Categories

• 📦 Project Setup - Initialize projects, create project briefs, and manage context (run first)
• 🔄 Phase Planning - Plan iterative development phases with user-driven requirements (optional)
• 📝 Story Management - Create, track, and manage individual stories
• ⚡ Workflow Automation - Automate complete lifecycle with /sdd:story-flow
• 🛠️ Development - Start, implement, and save work
• 🔍 Review - Quality checks and refactoring
• ✅ QA & Testing - Automated testing and validation
• 🚀 Shipping - Deploy features and handle rollbacks
• 📊 Analysis - Metrics, patterns, and technical debt
• 📅 Daily Workflow - Daily standup and planning

Requirements

• Claude Code CLI - Required for the plugin
• Git - Required for version control commands
• Test Framework - Required for QA commands (project-specific)

Project Context

The plugin uses a /docs/project-context/ directory for context-aware behavior. You can create this automatically or manually:

Automatic Setup (Recommended):

# Initialize project structure with interactive setup
/sdd:project-init

# Create comprehensive project brief
/sdd:project-brief [title]

Files Created:

• technical-stack.md - Technology choices and versions
• coding-standards.md - Code quality standards
• development-process.md - Workflow stages and quality gates
• project-glossary.md - Domain terminology
• project-brief.md - Project overview and story breakdown
• story-relationships.md - Story dependencies (if applicable)
• phases/[phase_name]/ - Phase-specific documentation (created by /sdd:project-phase)
  • phase-brief.md - Phase goals, features, and timeline
  • story-queue.md - Prioritized story backlog for the phase

The plugin automatically reads these files and adapts its behavior to match your project's needs.

Key Principles

• No Prerequisites: Commands work immediately with smart defaults
• Tech Stack Agnostic: Adapts to your actual technology choices
• Context-Aware: Reads project configuration when available
• Independent: Each command works standalone
• Full Lifecycle: From idea to production deployment

Removing the Plugin (when in Claude Code)

# Uninstall this plugin
/plugin uninstall sdd@claude-code-marketplace

# Remove the entire marketplace
/plugin marketplace remove ninthspace-marketplace

License

MIT - See LICENSE for details

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please:

1. Follow the existing plugin structure
2. Include comprehensive documentation
3. Add tests where applicable
4. Update the marketplace manifest
5. Submit a pull request

Support

For issues or questions:

• Open an issue on GitHub
• Check plugin-specific documentation
• Review the Claude Code plugin docs

Changelog

See individual plugin CHANGELOG.md files for version history.

Author

Chris Aves

Links

• Plugin Documentation
• Marketplace Documentation
• Claude Code Documentation