cadence

Claude Cadence

An issue-driven, multi-agent development workflow plugin for Claude Code.

Claude Cadence provides a structured development workflow with git worktrees, phased implementation, specialist agent delegation, and GitHub issue tracking — all stack-agnostic and customizable per project.

This repo also includes a thin Codex compatibility layer that reuses the existing Claude prompts, scripts, and CLAUDE.md as the source of truth. See docs/codex-compatibility.md.

Codex

Codex support is packaged as a compatibility layer rather than a second copy of the workflow docs:

• .codex-plugin/plugin.json registers the plugin for Codex
• codex/skills/ contains generated thin wrappers for commands, shared skills, and specialist roles
• scripts/sync-codex.py regenerates those wrappers from the canonical Claude source files

When updating Cadence workflows, edit the existing Claude files first and then run:

python3 scripts/sync-codex.py

Installation

Git clone (simplest)

git clone https://github.com/dokipen/claude-cadence.git
claude --plugin-dir ./claude-cadence

To always load the plugin, add --plugin-dir to your shell alias or config:

claude() { command claude --plugin-dir /path/to/claude-cadence "$@"; }

Plugin marketplace

# Add the marketplace (once)
/plugin marketplace add dokipen/claude-cadence

# Install the plugin
/plugin install claude-cadence

Updating

Git clone

cd /path/to/claude-cadence && git pull

Plugin marketplace

Run claude plugin update cadence@claude-cadence to update, then restart Claude Code.

What You Get

Commands (user-invoked)

Command	Purpose
/lead	Coordinate implementation through 8 structured phases (0–7)
/refine or /refine 123	Refine issues to quality standards

Skills (model-invoked)

Skill	Purpose
new-work	Create a git worktree for isolated development
create-pr	Create a PR with pre-flight verification
create-skill	Bootstrap new Claude Code skills
skill-iterate	Evaluate, benchmark, and iteratively improve an existing skill using Anthropic's skill-creator
project-ops	Shared worktree management utilities

Agents (specialist delegation)

Agent	Role
code-reviewer	PR reviews, code quality, best practices
tester	Test execution, bug reproduction, coverage
security-engineer	Security audits, dependency checks
performance-engineer	Performance profiling, optimization
claude-specialist	Claude Code configuration, agent/skill design
ticket-refiner	Issue quality assurance

Project Integration

Claude Cadence agents read your project's CLAUDE.md to discover stack-specific commands. Add a ## Verification section:

## Verification
flutter analyze && flutter test

or:

## Verification
go vet ./... && go test ./...

The agents and scripts will use this command automatically.

Machine-Local Ticket Provider Config (~/.claude/cadence.json)

You can set provider configuration in ~/.claude/cadence.json to avoid repeating it in every project's CLAUDE.md. Configuration precedence (highest to lowest):

1. Per-repo overrides (.repos["owner/repo"]) — overrides CLAUDE.md
2. CLAUDE.md — project-level config checked into the repo
3. Global defaults (top-level fields) — fallback when CLAUDE.md has no provider config
4. Built-in default — provider: github

Global default — applies to any repo that has no ## Ticket Provider section in CLAUDE.md:

{
  "provider": "issues-api",
  "project_id": "my-default-project",
  "api_url": "https://issues.example.com"
}

Per-repo override — overrides CLAUDE.md for a specific repo, identified by owner/repo slug derived from git remote get-url origin:

{
  "repos": {
    "owner/repo": {
      "provider": "issues-api",
      "project_id": "my-project"
    }
  }
}

Both can be combined in one file. Per-repo entries take precedence over CLAUDE.md; global defaults only apply when CLAUDE.md has no provider config. api_url is not overridable per-repo — it belongs in CLAUDE.md or the global default. Use ISSUES_API_URL for QA/local api_url overrides.

Adding Project-Specific Agents

Add domain-specific agents to your project's .claude/agents/ directory. They layer on top of the plugin's core agents:

your-project/.claude/
├── agents/
│   ├── designer.md              # Your custom agent
│   ├── game-mechanics-engineer.md  # Your custom agent
│   └── tester.md                # Overrides plugin's generic tester

Same-name agents in your project override the plugin version.

Workflow Overview