claude-project-bootstrap

Work with Claude on a complex project the way you'd work with a great collaborator: shared context that persists across sessions, machines, and the natural limits of any single conversation. What you've already figured out doesn't need to be re-explained.

The foundation is a GitHub Project board Claude keeps current as you work — decisions recorded, deferred work visible, in-flight issues tracked. Claude files the issues and updates the board. You just pick what to work on next. No PM overhead, no CLAUDE.md that grows until it breaks.

And because it's GitHub, the whole team benefits. Anyone contributing to the repo sees the same board — what's in flight, what's been decided, what's parked. Claude working with one teammate doesn't create a private context that others are locked out of.

This plugin bootstraps that setup on any repo in one command.

What's in it

Two plugins ship from this marketplace.

claude-project-bootstrap — one-time project setup. Four skills, individually invocable:

Skill	What it does
/claude-project-bootstrap:bootstrap-working-agreements	Orchestrator. Calls the others, then writes .claude/rules/working-agreements.md and a starter root CLAUDE.md from templates with project-specific placeholders filled in.
/claude-project-bootstrap:github-project-setup	Bootstrap a GitHub Project (v2) with Status / Tier / Area / Priority / Effort / Mode fields, standard labels, issue templates, optional milestones + tracking issues. Optionally migrates an existing planning doc into auto-added issues.
/claude-project-bootstrap:split-claudemd	Refactor a long root CLAUDE.md into a short hub + per-subdir spokes + .claude/rules/<topic>.md topic files. Enforces the 200-line root cap.
/claude-project-bootstrap:update-conventions	Pull later template improvements (working-agreements, issue templates) into an already-bootstrapped repo and retrofit newly-added plugins. A one-way template → repo reconcile.

It also installs git/PR hooks (preflight-branch, claim-branch, doc-gate, sibling-status) that enforce the lifecycle at the git boundary — claim an issue when you branch, block a code PR that skips its docs, surface cross-repo drift at session start.

engineering-craft — ongoing engineering & Claude-coding craft. Discipline skills you reach for as the work calls for them:

Skill	What it does
/engineering-craft:diagnose	Disciplined bug/perf diagnosis loop: reproduce → minimise → hypothesise → instrument → fix → regression-test.
/engineering-craft:tdd	Test-driven development with a red-green-refactor loop.
/engineering-craft:prototype	Throwaway prototype to flush out a design before committing — a runnable terminal app or several toggleable UI variations.
/engineering-craft:grill-with-docs	Stress-test a plan against your domain model; sharpen terminology and update the glossary + decisions log inline.
/engineering-craft:improve-codebase-architecture	Find deepening / refactoring opportunities, informed by the glossary and decisions.
/engineering-craft:to-issues	Break a plan, spec, or PRD into independently-grabbable issues via tracer-bullet vertical slices.
/engineering-craft:to-prd	Turn a conversation into a PRD for an initiative-scale effort and publish it as a tracking issue with sub-issues.
/engineering-craft:checkpoint	Write a session-handover doc so work resumes cleanly after /clear or on another machine.
/engineering-craft:zoom-out	Step back to a higher-level perspective on a section of code and how it fits the bigger picture. (Slash-invoke only.)

Install

# In any Claude Code session:
/plugin marketplace add toBzh30/Claude-Project-Bootstrap
/plugin install claude-project-bootstrap     # project setup
/plugin install engineering-craft            # optional craft companion

If you've forked this repo, replace toBzh30 with your own GitHub user or org. If the host is private, only collaborators with read access can install it.

Usage

Fresh repo:

cd <new-repo>
/claude-project-bootstrap:bootstrap-working-agreements

The skill reads the repo, proposes a setup, and walks through each item conversationally — the only thing it can't infer is what the project actually does. Confirms before creating anything, and leaves you with a working setup in one pass.

Existing repo:

Run the same command. The skill detects existing .claude/rules/ files, a pre-existing GitHub Project, and any current issue templates — and prompts before touching anything. You can refresh templates while keeping local decisions, add fields to an existing board, or skip steps you've already done.

Onboarding a team or a new machine

Once a repo is bootstrapped, its .claude/settings.json commits the marketplace source and the enabled plugins — so the setup travels with the repo. How a contributor activates it depends on whether Claude Code already trusts the folder.

Fresh clone (folder not yet trusted): clone, open Claude Code in the repo, and trust the folder when prompted. Claude Code then auto-prompts to register the marketplace and install the enabled plugins. No plugin commands needed.

Folder already trusted (you'd worked in the repo before the plugin block landed, so the trust prompt won't re-fire): realize the committed block manually, once per repo —

/plugin marketplace add toBzh30/Claude-Project-Bootstrap
/plugin install claude-project-bootstrap@claude-project-bootstrap --scope project
/plugin install engineering-craft@claude-project-bootstrap --scope project

Both installs are idempotent against the committed block. Project state — issues, PRs, board status — lives on GitHub, so a teammate or a different machine picks up where things stand without re-briefing.

Forking

To run a customized copy under your own user or org:

1. Fork or clone this repo to <your-owner>/Claude-Project-Bootstrap.
2. Update two metadata files:
   • .claude-plugin/marketplace.json → owner.name
   • plugins/claude-project-bootstrap/.claude-plugin/plugin.json → author.name
3. Push, then in Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add <your-owner>/Claude-Project-Bootstrap.

Templates under plugins/claude-project-bootstrap/skills/*/templates/ are designed to be edited — your team's working-agreements, roadmap shape, and issue templates probably aren't identical to the defaults.

Updating the plugin

Add "autoUpdate": true to a repo's committed marketplace entry and its installed plugins re-pin to the marketplace's main on each session start — push to the marketplace repo and consumers converge automatically, no per-repo reinstall. Bootstrap registers the marketplace source but leaves autoUpdate off; turn it on when you want hands-off updates.

Two things stay manual:

• Template files (working-agreements, issue templates) are copied into each repo at bootstrap, so autoUpdate doesn't touch them. Pull later improvements with /claude-project-bootstrap:update-conventions — a per-hunk reconcile.

• Forcing an update without waiting for a restart, or when autoUpdate is off:

  /plugin marketplace update claude-project-bootstrap
  /plugin install claude-project-bootstrap  # picks up the new version
  

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. The contribution contract is the bundled working-agreements template.

License

Licensed under the MIT License.

This is an independent community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic. "Claude" is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC.