Individual skill

spec-kickoff

Guides a spec-first kickoff before building anything substantial: Karpathy's three layers, spec, verifier, environment. Phase 1 interviews down to a SPEC.md with EARS requirements, Phase 2 builds a verification plan, Phase 3 wires it into the existing environment. Trigger: "spec-kickoff", "kickoff", "spec this", "spec first", "before we build", "karpathy method".

skills/spec-kickoff/SKILL.md

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Last checked: Nov 5, 2026

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Repository stars (not skill ratings): 13
Repository last updated: Nov 8, 2026
License: MIT

Observed agent integration: No specific integration evidence. Standard SKILL.md installation does not imply verified compatibility.

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SKILL.mdcore · 8,114 bytes
assets/SPEC.mddoc · 3,682 bytes
assets/spec-kickoff-explainer.htmlasset · 28,611 bytes
references/method.mddoc · 13,509 bytes

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# Spec-Kickoff

A phased, checkpointed kickoff for **starting a new build the right way** — Andrej
Karpathy's three layers (**spec → verifier → environment**), expressed through Claude
Code's own primitives. You produce **one self-contained `SPEC.md` that ends in an
end-to-end verification step**, then hand off to the build.

This is **not** a new framework. It is spec-kit's discipline + Kiro's EARS/gates,
expressed through Anthropic's native *"interview → SPEC.md → verify-loop"* pattern,
wired into the environment the user already has. Conceptual depth, the verified
Karpathy sources, and the EARS / ladder / gate cheat-sheets live in
[`references/method.md`](references/method.md). The artifact you fill is
[`assets/SPEC.md`](assets/SPEC.md). A one-page visual explainer for humans (open in a
browser) ships at [`assets/spec-kickoff-explainer.html`](assets/spec-kickoff-explainer.html).