Project Documentation Scaffold Template
A Cookiecutter template that
instantly generates a complete, standardized documentation structure for
software projects.
Why Use This?
Instead of creating documentation folders ad-hoc or copy-pasting from old
projects, get a battle-tested, consistent structure in seconds. Perfect for
developers and teams who want organized, AI-assistant-friendly documentation
without building the structure from scratch each time.
Key benefits:
- Pre-organized folders with best practices built in
- AI-ready with CLAUDE.md context templates
- Works seamlessly with the project-docs Claude Code plugin
- Structured for effective AI-assisted development workflows
What This Template Provides
This template creates a complete documentation structure for your project,
including:
- Structured documentation folders organized by purpose: permanent reference
(architecture, specifications, playbooks, etc.), discovery & assessment
(investigations, reports), and work tracking (projects, backlog)
- README files in each folder explaining purpose and best practices
- Template files for quick-start document creation, including project-scoped
templates for proposals, plans, and sessions
- memories/ folder for quick onboarding context about recent work
- CLAUDE.md template with project context for AI assistants (in docs/)
- AGENTS.md guidance file for AI coding assistants
- Project README template with standard sections
Claude Code Plugin
This template is designed to work with the project-docs Claude Code plugin,
which provides commands and skills for managing your documentation structure:
Commands (explicit user actions):
/project-docs:project-summary - Generate comprehensive project state
analysis/project-docs:project-recipe - Extract reusable project patterns/project-docs:update-deps - Automated dependency management/project-docs:init-branch - Initialize a new branch from develop/project-docs:project-manifesto - Discover and articulate project purpose/project-docs:start-worktree - Bootstrap an agent session in a worktree
Skills (auto-surfaced by agent + user-invocable):
/project-docs:create-project - Scaffold a new project folder with proposal/project-docs:generate-dev-plan - Create development plan from proposal/project-docs:generate-design-resolution - Resolve design ambiguity via Q&A/project-docs:generate-test-plan - Generate tiered verification scenarios/project-docs:finalize-branch - Code review, documentation, and merge
workflow/project-docs:review-docs - Documentation health checks with parallel agents/project-docs:parallel-worktree-dev - Orchestrate parallel worktree
development
Installation:
# Add this repository as a marketplace
/plugin marketplace add ichabodcole/project-docs-scaffold-template
# Install the project-docs plugin
/plugin install project-docs
See plugins/project-docs/README.md for
detailed documentation on each command.
Cross-Agent Skills (OpenCode, Codex, Crush, Cursor, etc.)
The skills from this project follow the Agent Skills
open standard and work with any tool that supports SKILL.md files. Pre-built
distribution packages are available in the dist/ directory.
OpenPackage (recommended):
opkg install gh@ichabodcole/project-docs-scaffold-template/dist/project-docs
Direct clone:
git clone https://github.com/ichabodcole/project-docs-scaffold-template.git
Then point your tool's skills path at dist/<plugin>/skills/. See each plugin's
dist README for tool-specific configuration examples.
Note: Agents and commands are Claude Code-specific. Other tools will load
only the skills.
Installation
First, ensure you have Cookiecutter installed:
pip install cookiecutter
Usage
Generate a new project documentation structure:
cookiecutter gh:ichabodcole/project-docs-scaffold-template
You'll be prompted to provide:
ichabodcole
