Tandem is a Claude Code plugin that takes you from idea to production — without the chaos. You drive the whole plan with slash commands; Tandem makes sure nothing slips: no stories go in-progress without a testplan, no work ships without passing its gates, no decision disappears into the chat log. The result is a team-quality delivery rhythm, at solo-founder pace.
How it works
Tandem installs a _00-Project-Management/ scaffold into your project and registers a set of /Tandem:* skills that cover the full North Star → Done lifecycle. Two hooks keep everything honest: a linter that runs on every PM file edit, and a generator that rebuilds an interactive HTML Command Center whenever your plan changes. Both hooks run a single stdlib-only Node entrypoint (node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/_00-Project-Management/93-Scripts/hook.js) directly — no npm step is involved.
It's stack-agnostic — the bootstrap asks what you're building (web, mobile, CLI, library, backend, data-pipeline, Power Platform, or automation) and tailors the guidance to match.
Why it's different from "AI project management"
Most "AI project management" is a chat log. Tandem is a contract:
- Closed-set status enum — exactly nine statuses, never invented ad-hoc, so every board reads the same.
- Story ↔ Testplan pairing (enforced) — you cannot create a Story without a paired Testplan where every acceptance criterion maps to a runnable test case. No "trust me, it works."
- DoR / DoD gates — work can't enter in-progress without meeting Definition of Ready, and can't reach done without Definition of Done. The gates are checked, not assumed.
- ADR-on-the-spot — every non-obvious decision becomes an Architecture Decision Record in the same edit, so the why is never lost.
- Auto bug-raising — the moment a test case fails, a structured BUG file is filed before the failure is even reported back to you.
- A living Command Center — a single self-contained HTML view of your entire plan, regenerated automatically. (That's the live demo above.)
The lifecycle
flowchart LR
NS[North Star] --> OKR[OKRs]
OKR --> PRD[PRD]
PRD --> E[Epic]
E --> F[Feature]
F --> S[Story]
S --> TP[Testplan]
TP --> X[execute-story]
X --> R[run-testplan]
R --> C[close-out-story]
C --> M[(Command Center)]
M -. weekly / monthly review .-> OKR
Every arrow is a slash command. Every box is a markdown artefact in your repo.
Install
# 1. Add the Tandem marketplace
/plugin marketplace add DATA-AI-XYZ/Tandem
# 2. Install the plugin
/plugin install Tandem@DATA-AI-XYZ
# 3. Bootstrap it into your project (drops _00-Project-Management/, wires hooks, seeds CLAUDE.md)
/Tandem:session-start
On install Tandem will:
- Drop the
_00-Project-Management/ scaffold into your project root (if absent).
- Register the
/Tandem:* skills covering the full North Star → Done lifecycle.
- Enable two hooks — lint-on-edit and Command-Center-regen-on-stop.
- Insert a slim PM rules block into your root
CLAUDE.md (idempotent, under a managed marker).
No plugin access? Tandem also ships a paste-prompt installer — see BOOTSTRAP-PROMPT.md.
Slash commands
