Hodge

AI development framework: Freedom to explore, discipline to build, confidence to ship.

Hodge brings structure to AI-assisted development without sacrificing creativity. Work seamlessly with Claude Code through progressive phases that match how you actually build software.

🚧 Status

Alpha Development - Not ready for production use. Active development towards MVP.

✨ Features

• Progressive Development - Explore freely, build with structure, ship with confidence
• Claude Code Integration - Purpose-built slash commands for natural AI workflows
• Smart Test Strategy - Tests evolve with your code (intentions → smoke → integration → full suite)
• PM Integration - Connect to Linear, GitHub, or Jira (Linear supported first)
• Quality Gates - Automated standards enforcement that adapts to your phase
• Feature Isolation - Keep exploration, decisions, tests, and artifacts organized per feature

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

npm install -g @hodgeson/hodge

Initialize Your Project

hodge init

Use in Claude Code

Once initialized, use slash commands in Claude Code:

/explore user-authentication    # Explore the problem space
/build user-authentication      # Implement with smoke tests
/harden user-authentication     # Add integration tests & validate
/ship user-authentication       # Create commit & ship to production

📖 Progressive Workflow

Hodge follows a natural progression from idea to production:

| Phase | Focus | Standards | Tests | |-------|-------|-----------|-------| | Explore | Understanding the problem | Optional | Test intentions (markdown) | | Build | Getting it working | Recommended | Smoke tests (does it crash?) | | Harden | Production readiness | Required | Integration tests (behavior) | | Ship | Deployment | Enforced | Full coverage (confidence) |

🧪 Testing Philosophy

"Vibe testing for vibe coding" - Test behavior, not implementation.

npm run test:smoke       # Quick sanity checks (<100ms each)
npm run test:integration # Behavior verification (<500ms each)
npm test                 # Full suite (all tests)
npm run quality          # All checks (lint + type + test)

See TEST-STRATEGY.md for complete testing guidelines.

📚 Documentation

• Getting Started - Installation and first steps
• TEST-STRATEGY.md - Testing philosophy and guidelines
• CONTRIBUTING.md - Development setup and contribution guide
• CHANGELOG.md - Version history and changes

After running hodge init, your project will have:

• .hodge/standards.md - Project-specific standards
• .claude/commands/ - Slash command definitions

🔧 Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 20.0.0
• npm (comes with Node.js)
• Claude Code (recommended) - https://claude.com/code

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md for:

• Development setup
• Testing guidelines
• Code standards
• Pull request process

📜 License

MIT © Hodgeson

Learn more: www.hodgeson.dev