speckit-specify — Claude Code skill: spec from a description

What speckit-specify does

The skill reads whatever you typed after the invocation and builds a spec draft from it. It pulls the meaningful keywords out of the description and forms a 2–4 word short name in action-noun form, something like add-user-auth or fix-payment-timeout. Then it creates a directory under specs/, copies the active spec-template into it as spec.md, and writes the path to .specify/feature.json so later commands in the chain can find the feature without guessing from the git branch name.

The directory number comes from .specify/init-options.json: with feature_numbering: timestamp you get a timestamp prefix, with sequential or no value at all you get the next free three-digit number. If the file still carries the deprecated branch_numbering key, the skill prints a one-line warning. Branch name and directory name are independent here, and they do not have to match.

Before writing anything, the skill checks .specify/extensions.yml for before_specify hooks. Mandatory ones (optional: false) it runs itself and waits for the result; optional ones it only surfaces as a command for you. A YAML file that fails to parse is not skipped quietly — the skill reports the parser error and says no hooks were checked. One invocation creates exactly one feature. The project needs the spec-kit structure with a .specify/ directory.