Getting Started

transcend-harness is a meta-framework for Claude Code: run it inside any project and it interviews you, detects the stack, and generates a bespoke, committed .claude/ harness — then helps maintain and improve it over time.

Install

transcend-harness works two ways from the same files (no duplication):

As a plugin

Install via the bundled marketplace. Skills and agents are discovered from skills/ and agents/, and ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} resolves to the repo so the CORE library under core/ is readable.

# in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add ldippo/transcend-harness
/plugin install transcend-harness

As a plain repo

Clone or symlink so the skills are discovered (e.g. under ~/.claude or a project .claude/). Skills resolve TRANSCEND_ROOT by falling back to the repo’s root when $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT is unset.

git clone https://github.com/ldippo/transcend-harness.git

Generate your harness

Inside the target project, run the spine:

/transcend-init

The interview walks through:

1. Stack detection — read-only probes score your manifests (package.json, pyproject.toml, go.mod, …) against stack profiles such as node-ts-react, python-fastapi, and go-service, with an unknown fallback.
2. Scope & appetite — confirm the detected stack, choose repo/subpath/workspace scope, and set your overall enforcement appetite (docs-only, advisory, or strict).
3. Pillar options — pick a convention per pillar: architecture style, testing strategy, handoff mechanisms, git workflow, quality gates.
4. Per-rule tiers — decide for each rule whether it’s documented, nudged, or blocked (see Enforcement Tiers).
5. Catalog — accept or skip specialized workflows recommended for your stack.
6. Plan preview → generate — nothing is written before you confirm the plan.

The result is a committed .claude/ directory: CLAUDE.md, path-scoped rules/, settings.json hooks, a handoff scaffold, and a manifest that makes re-init and audit safe (hand-edited files are never overwritten — see Architecture).

Day-to-day commands

Command	What it does
/transcend-init	Interview + generate the harness (the spine).
/transcend-handoff	Write a session handoff before you stop.
/transcend-resume	Manually reload the latest handoff.
/transcend-audit	Critique an existing harness and propose improvements.
/transcend-catalog	Browse / add specialized workflow skills.

Full details on each: Skills & Commands.

Where to go next

• Philosophy — the framework’s standing opinions.
• The Seven Pillars — what each pillar covers and the options offered.
• Enforcement Tiers — docs vs. advisory vs. blocking.
• Authoring guides — extend the framework with your own pillars and stacks.