Atelier

A personal development toolkit for AI agents. It covers spec-driven development, code quality, and deep thinking.

Atelier gives coding agents a disciplined way to move from an idea to reviewed, verified code without taking control away from the developer.

npx skills add martinffx/atelier
npx @martinffx/atelier@latest init --harness <claude|opencode|codex|cursor>

How Atelier works

Atelier uses as much process as each request needs. Bounded work gets a concise plan in the conversation. Substantial work gets a durable spec, an implementation plan, and tracked execution. The developer approves the plan before implementation begins.

flowchart TD
    R[Request] --> O[atelier-orchestrator]
    O -->|Bounded work| IP[spec-plan: Inline Plan]
    IP --> A[Developer approval]
    A --> I[Implement directly]
    I --> V[Validate]
    O -->|Substantial work| B[spec-brainstorm]
    B --> D[design.md]
    D --> G[oracle-grill-me]
    G --> P[spec-plan: review and approve]
    P --> J[plan.json]
    J --> SI[spec-implement]
    SI --> CR[code-review]
    CR --> F[spec-finish]
    F --> PR[code-pull-request]

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The workflow is deliberately harder to rush than an unstructured agent session. It records decisions when they need to survive the conversation, keeps implementation tied to an approved plan, and requires evidence before calling the work complete.

Grill the idea

oracle-grill-me interviews you one question at a time until the important decisions are explicit. It researches facts from the codebase instead of asking you to supply them, gives a recommended answer for each decision, and leaves the final choice with you.

As the discussion resolves, it maintains the project's domain language and architectural decisions. Use it on a proposal, plan, migration, or design that feels settled a little too quickly.

Grill me on this migration plan

Review the code

code-review runs a multi-agent review rather than asking one agent for a general opinion. Sentinel triages the diff, specialist reviewers examine likely failure modes in parallel, Architect checks design boundaries, and a final challenge pass removes weak or unsupported findings.

rq             # Review the diff to main
rq develop     # Review against another branch
rs             # Work through the findings

It reports findings before changing code. You decide which fixes to apply.

What you get

Atelier installs a focused set of skills for the full development loop:

Area	Capabilities
Spec workflow	Discovery, research, planning, implementation, validation, and finishing
Thinking	Root-cause debugging, decision grilling, and domain modelling
Delivery	Multi-agent review, subagent coordination, commits, handoffs, and pull requests

The CLI also configures three specialist agents for Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, or Cursor:

Agent	Role
Sentinel	Fast codebase reconnaissance and review triage
Oracle	Requirements, trade-offs, and adversarial analysis
Architect	Domain modelling, system design, and architecture review

Run npx @martinffx/atelier@latest --help for CLI commands and options. Each skill contains its own operating instructions and loads when its context applies.

Ecosystem

Language-specific guidance lives in companion repositories:

• Python skills
• TypeScript skills

Rationale and inspiration

Better models alone do not produce better software. Coding agents, like human teams, are shaped by the systems they work within. Good outcomes depend on more than individual ability. They depend on the processes, constraints, shared context, and feedback surrounding the work. If that system does little to encourage quality or catch weak results, agents will simply produce unreliable code faster. Atelier is an attempt to build a better system around the agent, making robust output more repeatable. Building Your Own Agent Harness explains the thinking behind it.

The name is literal. An atelier is a workshop where a principal works with assistants. Here, the developer is the principal, agents are the assistants, the codebase is the workshop, and skills record how the work happens.

Atelier draws on spec-driven development and several projects that informed its approach to agent collaboration:

• Agent OS for discovering project standards and shaping lightweight specs.
• OpenSpec for fluid, artifact-guided workflows that support iteration and brownfield development.
• GitHub Spec Kit for making specifications central to a structured specify, plan, tasks, and implement workflow.
• Superpowers for composable skills, mandatory engineering workflows, TDD, and evidence-based verification.
• Matt Pocock's Skills for small, adaptable skills grounded in practical engineering and developer control.

Some Atelier skills have more direct lineage:

Atelier skill	Source skill	Relationship
atelier-orchestrator	Superpowers using-superpowers	Adapted from its mandatory skill-routing discipline.
spec-brainstorm	Superpowers brainstorming	Adapted from its conversational discovery and section-by-section design approval.
spec-plan	Superpowers writing-plans	Inspired by its explicit, verifiable implementation plans.
spec-implement	Superpowers executing-plans and test-driven-development	Inspired by plan-driven execution and test-first feedback loops.
spec-finish	Superpowers finishing-a-development-branch and verification-before-completion	Inspired by its validation and completion workflow.
code-subagents	Superpowers subagent-driven-development and dispatching-parallel-agents	Inspired by fresh subagents, parallel dispatch, and batch review.
code-handoff	Matt Pocock's handoff	Adapted from its context-preserving handoff format.
oracle-grill-me	Matt Pocock's grilling and grill-with-docs	Adapted from its rigorous interview loop and integration with living domain documentation.
oracle-domain-modelling	Matt Pocock's domain-modeling	Adapted from its active domain-modelling discipline, CONTEXT.md, and lightweight ADRs.
oracle-debug	Superpowers systematic-debugging and Matt Pocock's diagnosing-bugs	Adapted from their root-cause-first debugging workflows.

code-commit follows the Conventional Commits specification.

Atelier adapts these ideas into an opinionated toolkit that works across harnesses. It does not claim to have invented the practices it uses.

Development

Load the repository directly in Claude Code:

claude --plugin-dir ./atelier

Build and test the CLI:

bun run build
bun test
bun run typecheck

Restart your coding harness after changing skills so it reloads their definitions.

License

MIT Copyright (c) 2026 Martin Richards