GSD — Spec-Driven AI Development

What it does

GSD (Get Shit Done) is a spec-driven, context-engineering workflow for building software with AI coding agents. It prevents context rot — where agent output quality degrades across sessions as context fills and earlier decisions get forgotten or contradicted. GSD externalizes every requirement, decision, plan, and verification into a .planning/ directory the agent reads across sessions, so projects stay coherent over unlimited sessions.

Core workflow — the five-step loop

The core unit of delivery is the Discuss → Plan → Execute → Verify → Ship loop, closed by /gsd-ship N, which creates the per-phase PR, runs review, and archives the phase. Milestone-level audit-milestone / complete-milestone run once per milestone.

new-project → discuss-phase N → plan-phase N → execute-phase N → verify-work N → ship N

Each phase produces atomic, committable task plans. Each plan gets exactly one git commit before the next starts.

Command surface

GSD ships a source-verified command surface of 65 concrete commands organized under six namespace routers — /gsd-workflow, /gsd-project, /gsd-quality, /gsd-context, /gsd-manage, /gsd-ideate — each routing to the concrete /gsd-* commands (which can also be invoked directly). Highlights: /gsd-ship, /gsd-plan-phase N, /gsd-capture, /gsd-debug, /gsd-audit-milestone, /gsd-complete-milestone, /gsd-verify-work N, /gsd-map-codebase, /gsd-graphify, /gsd-pause-work / /gsd-resume-work.

What GSD creates

A structured .planning/ directory at your workspace root: PROJECT.md, REQUIREMENTS.md, ROADMAP.md, STATE.md, per-phase [N]-CONTEXT.md, [N]-[M]-PLAN.md, [N]-[M]-SUMMARY.md, plus debug/, quick/, codebase/, and graphs/. Bundled scripts (init_planning.py, generate_plan.py, check_progress.py, export_okf.py) bootstrap and edit these artifacts headlessly.

Ecosystem & companions

Optional companions — shipped npm packages at their current maturity, none required by the core methodology: gsd-pi (standalone CLI), gsd-browser (browser automation), gsd-graph (+ MCP knowledge graph), gsd-loop (iteration loop). Install as the scoped package npx @opengsd/gsd-core@latest. Planning artifacts export as an Open Knowledge Format (OKF) bundle for portable knowledge sharing and OpenGSD sync.