developer-assistant-skills

A vendor-neutral, open-source developer plugin for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and Codex. full software lifecycle, closed-loop

Best-of-breed skills and agents for the full software lifecycle — requirements, architecture, design, implementation, review, testing, accessibility, debugging, and bounded autonomous repair — usable from Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Codex.

The canonical source of truth is .developer/; thin runtime adapters point back to it.

📖 Documentation site: https://deepakkamboj.github.io/developer-assistant-skills/ (Nextra site in website/).

• 36 skills across 10 lifecycle groups · 20 agents (15 review critics + 5 leads/validators)
• Closed-loop (EASE-MAS): orchestrator + traceability graph + independent critics; repair is bounded with a regression gate and human-only merge
• CLI-first, MCP-fallback tooling (gh, az, npx playwright, npx axe)

Quick start

Install the namespaced plugin

Register the marketplace and install the developer plugin for your user account. The plugin is then available in every project.

GitHub Copilot CLI:

copilot plugin marketplace add deepakkamboj/developer-assistant-skills
copilot plugin install developer@developer-assistant-skills

Claude Code:

claude plugin marketplace add deepakkamboj/developer-assistant-skills
claude plugin install developer@developer-assistant-skills --scope user

Invoke any installed skill through the plugin namespace:

/developer:a11y-fix
/developer:code-review
/developer:fix-bug

The marketplace catalogs live in .github/plugin/marketplace.json and .claude-plugin/marketplace.json. Both point to .developer/, the shared plugin root containing plugin.json, skills/, and agents/.

Install the catalog CLI

The npm package also provides the standalone dev-skills command for listing, validating, and diagnosing the catalog. Installing this CLI does not copy skills into an assistant folder; use the commands above for assistant integration.

npm install --global developer-assistant-skills

dev-skills list skills
dev-skills list agents
dev-skills validate
dev-skills doctor

Use a source checkout

Contributors and users who want the full canonical tree and generated slash-command adapters can clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/deepakkamboj/developer-assistant-skills.git
cd developer-assistant-skills

# Point the plugin at your config (or use ~/.developer/config.json)
cp .developer/config/config.example.json ~/.developer/config.json
export DEVELOPER_CONFIG=~/.developer/config.json     # PowerShell: $env:DEVELOPER_CONFIG="$HOME/.developer/config.json"

node bin/cli.js validate

Then invoke a namespaced skill from your assistant:

• Claude Code / GitHub Copilot CLI: /developer:code-review, /developer:fix-bug, /developer:a11y-scan, …
• Codex / any agent: read .developer/AGENTS.md and reference the skill by path.

Automation prompts under .github/automations/ and the personal usage.md guide are local-only: they are ignored by Git, excluded from future npm packages, and not required by repository tests. Keep backups separately and manage saved Copilot schedules yourself. Untracking these files does not remove copies from older Git history, release tags or published npm versions, including 1.0.2. Shared, opt-in CI workflows remain documented in the workflow guide.

What's inside

| Group | Skills | |-------|--------| | requirements | from-requirements, grade-spec | | architecture | graph-repo, architecture-doc, threat-model | | design | design-spec, from-figma | | development | start-feature, implement-change, refactor | | repo | sweep-codebase | | review | code-review, deliberate, pr-learn | | testing | test-plan, validate-scenario, coverage-gap, flaky-test | | testing/playwright | playwright-auth, run-tests, author-test, verify-test, update-test | | accessibility | a11y-scan, a11y-review, a11y-test-gen, a11y-fix, a11y-verify, a11y-dev, a11y-report | | debugging | analyze-bug, root-cause, fix-bug, fix-test | | devops | fix-ci, release-readiness |

Agents — 15 review critics (code-reviewer, security-advocate, architecture-advocate, performance-advocate, accessibility-advocate, unit-testing-advocate, e2e-test-author, manual-tester, observability-advocate, dependency-manager, style-guardian, internationalization-expert, documentation-steward, refactorer, debugger) plus 5 leads/gates (supervisor, traceability-keeper, bug-exterminator, repair-validator, a11y-tester).

Each skill's instructions live in .developer/skills/.

Design

• .developer/ canonical tree: skills/ (grouped by lifecycle), agents/, workflows/, commands/, mcp/, config/, docs/, scripts/.
• Single config: config.json via DEVELOPER_CONFIG (fallback ~/.developer/config.json) + content.md / memory.md / notes.md. No data/ folder.
• Skill contract: ## Role → ## Context to load → ## Workflow (Step 0 TodoWrite → Steps). Ask, don't hallucinate.
• Open-source: no vendor-internal content.
• Provenance + rename map: .developer/docs/skill-sources.md; authoritative architecture in .developer/docs/design.md.

Autonomous CI/CD (disabled by default)

.github/workflows/ includes autonomous bug fix, test fix, product-bug repair, agent code review, and evals — all disabled by default and safe (draft PRs only, no auto-merge). Enable via repo variables. See .github/workflows/README.md.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Every skill must satisfy the contract and pass node bin/cli.js validate.

License

MIT.