daretodave/nexus

Nexus is a methodology + template kit that turns a repo into a
project that ships itself. You write a spec; nexus gives you a
small set of slash commands (/ship-a-phase, /iterate,
/critique, /triage, /march) that read your spec, ship a
slice, run the verify gate, push, watch the deploy, and
iterate. Run it manually for an evening; let it loop for a
weekend; come back to a working product. Stack-agnostic, AI
client-agnostic, $0 marginal on Claude Pro/Max + a public repo.
> A methodology + template kit for turning any repo into an
> **autonomous beast** — a project that ships itself end-to-end
> through a small set of slash commands, supervises its own
> deploys, observes its own output, and addresses its own
> feedback. From "I drive every commit" to "leave it for 80
> hours and come back to a working product."
This kit is extracted from two real projects (tickpedia, thock)
that operate this way. It is not theory; everything in here was
shipped, broken, and refined in real codebases.
**Run it on your laptop, in the cloud, or both.** The base kit
is local-only — /loop /march runs in your Claude Code session.
An opt-in workflow (playbooks/cloud-loop.md) puts the same
loop on GitHub Actions for unattended ticks while you're away.
$0 marginal on Claude Pro/Max + a public repo.
A single /march tick, at a glance
(Triage/Critique/Expand/Dispatch are the slash commands in
What you get, below.)
Each tick: one decision, one slice of work, one verify, one
commit, one push, one deploy confirmation. Repeat under /loop
for hours or days.
→ TL;DR — clone + delegate the adoption (skip the playbook, hand it to your agent)
→ TL;DR — I have a pitch, no spec yet (pre-spec interview, then adoption)
---
TL;DR — clone + delegate the adoption
> Use this if you already have a spec.md. If you only have
> a verbal pitch, jump down to
> TL;DR — I have a pitch, no spec yet.
If you'd rather have an agent do the adoption work for you,
clone nexus next to your repo and paste the prompt below into
Claude Code (or Cursor, or any capable agent) at your project's
root.
1. Clone
Replace below with wherever you forked
or mirrored nexus (e.g. github.com/you/nexus):
(If you'd rather submodule it into your repo:
git submodule add .nexus and treat ./.nexus as the
nexus root throughout.)
2. Hand it to your agent
Paste this at your project's root (where git status shows
your repo) — swap for the URL you
cloned in step 1:
The full instruction set your agent follows lives in
prompts/adopt.md — read it yourself
first if you want to know exactly what you're authorizing.
(See prompts/README.md for what lives
in that directory and why.)
3. Review what landed
When the agent returns, expect:
- A new commit titled chore: adopt nexus methodology.
- Files added: agents.md, CLAUDE.md, plan/, skills/,
.claude/, scripts/, .env.example.
- Existing source code: **untouched** (per the playbooks).
- A list of [needs-user-call] rows in plan/AUDIT.md if the
agent had to defer any decisions to you.
- pnpm verify (or stack-equivalent) and pnpm deploy:check
specified and ready to wire once phase 1 lands — not
necessarily passing yet.
Read the diff. Resolve the [needs-user-call] rows by editing
the relevant files (or running /oversight). Populate .env
with your tokens. **Then run /ship-a-phase for the first
time** — manually, level 0 of the intervention spectrum. Don't
skip to /loop /march.
When this TL;DR is the wrong path
- Your repo is in active multi-developer flux. Use the manual
playbook so you can choose what to merge.
- You're skeptical of unattended adoption. Use the playbook —
read it, do it yourself, develop intuition.
- You want to deeply understand the methodology before
applying it. Read the concept docs first; come back to the
TL;DR if it still sounds right.
The TL;DR is for "I trust the methodology, save me the
keystrokes." The playbooks are for everyone else.
---
TL;DR — I have a pitch, no spec yet
> Use this if you have a working name and a one-paragraph
> pitch, but no spec.md yet. This runs the pre-spec
> interview, writes spec.md, and then hands off to the
> adoption flow above. End-to-end in one paste.
Paste this at your project's root (where git init has run
but there's nothing else yet) — swap
for wherever you forked or mirrored nexus:
The full instruction set — pre-spec interview, then handoff
to the adoption flow above — lives in