[Bug]: 0.4.2 removed "extension" command from specify

[ChristianPresley]

Bug Description

extension add fails with no command found:

specify extension add verify-tasks
Usage: specify [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
Try 'specify --help' for help.                   
Error │ No such command 'extension'. Did you mean 'version'

Help does not list "extension" in version 0.4.2

specify --help
GitHub Spec Kit - Spec-Driven Development Toolkit                                                                       
 Usage: specify [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...                                                                                                                                                    
 Setup tool for Specify spec-driven development projects                                                                                                                                       
 Options 
│ --help          Show this message and exit.                                                                                                                                                 
 Commands 
│ init     Initialize a new Specify project from the latest template.
│ check    Check that all required tools are installed.
│ version  Display version and system information.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run specify extension add <extension>
2. Run specify --help
3. Run specify extension --help

Expected Behavior

Extensions are installed or the command is available.

Actual Behavior

Command not found.

Specify CLI Version

0.4.2

AI Agent

Not applicable

Operating System

Ubuntu 24.04

Python Version

Python 3.12.3

Error Logs

Additional Context

No response

[mnriem]

I am unable to reproduce the issue

specify extension add verify-tasks
Error: 'verify-tasks' is available in the 'community' catalog but installation is not allowed from that catalog.

To enable installation, add 'verify-tasks' to an approved catalog (install_allowed: true) in .specify/extension-catalogs.yml.

[mbachorik]

i have just reproduced:

michalbachorik@Michals-MacBook-Pro xxxx % uv tool install specify-cli --force
Resolved 20 packages in 338ms
Prepared 2 packages in 142ms
Installed 20 packages in 21ms

• annotated-doc==0.0.4
• anyio==4.13.0
• certifi==2026.2.25
• click==8.3.1
• h11==0.16.0
• httpcore==1.0.9
• httpx==0.28.1
• idna==3.11
• markdown-it-py==4.0.0
• mdurl==0.1.2
• platformdirs==4.9.4
• pygments==2.19.2
• readchar==4.2.1
• rich==14.3.3
• shellingham==1.5.4
• socksio==1.0.0
• specify-cli==1.0.0
• truststore==0.10.4
• typer==0.24.1
• typing-extensions==4.15.0
  Installed 1 executable: specify
  michalbachorik@Michals-MacBook-Pro xxxxx % specify extension add --dev ../../bugfixes/yyyyyyyyyyy
  Usage: specify [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
  Try 'specify --help' for help.
  ╭─ Error ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │ No such command 'extension'. Did you mean 'version'?

Looking into it

[mbachorik]

Doc bug.

Caused by install from PyPi which has stale package.

What happened

The upgrade instruction in the error message was incomplete/wrong. It said:
uv tool install specify-cli --force

But the correct command, per spec-kit's own README, is:
uv tool install specify-cli --force --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@vX.Y.Z

Without --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git, uv fetched specify-cli from PyPI — where there is a completely unrelated package also called specify-cli (versions 0.0.20, 0.0.22, 1.0.0) with no author, no homepage, no project URLs. It's a different project
that squatted the same PyPI name.

That PyPI package is a minimal stub with only init, check, version — no extension command.

The real spec-kit specify-cli is only distributed from GitHub, not PyPI.

---

Fix

Reinstall the real spec-kit CLI:

uv tool install specify-cli --force --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@v0.4.3

This will restore the extension command and give you the proper 0.4.3 version. The manual installation I did earlier will still work once the CLI is back to spec-kit's version.

---

I verified that everything works once installed latest from github.

[mnriem]

@mbachorik What do you think should we update docs?