Doctrine

Doctrine is an opinionated but hackable set of tools and conventions for software engineering with LLM agents.

Heresy burns; Doctrine remains.

Design Goals:

1. Correctness
2. Laziness
3. Hackability
4. Efficiency

• DX for solo developers, teams
• time and token efficiency
• suitability for systems of any size & complexity profile
• useful support for "pre-rational" stages of specification (e.g. product design, backlog)
• quality engineering: robust auditability; formal verification gates
• separation of structured, relational data from prose
• separation of mutable, disposable state from useful artifacts
• thoughfully designed memory retrieval, relevance & decay
• composability; provide "orchestration primitives"
• avoidance of vendor lockin
• single binary distribution
• more with less: focused ambition, not minimalism.

Non-Goals

• SaaS integration (in core)
• Windows support (for now)
• Integrated TUI (for now)

Installation

TL'DR:

curl -sL https://install.doctrinal.systems | sh

Prebuilt binary (macOS + Linux, no Rust toolchain) — recommended:

# latest release (rolling):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davidlee/doctrine/main/install.sh | sh

# or pin to a release tag for reproducibility:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davidlee/doctrine/v0.8.1/install.sh | sh

Installs to ~/.local/bin (override with DOCTRINE_BIN_DIR); choose a version with DOCTRINE_VERSION. The script checksum-verifies what it downloads — read it before piping to a shell. macOS arm64 + x86_64; Linux x86_64 + aarch64 (static musl — runs on any distro regardless of glibc version).

Or with cargo binstall (prebuilt, no compile):

cargo binstall doctrine

Or cargo install (compiles from source; needs a Rust toolchain — may hit the -liconv link error on some macOS toolchains, which the prebuilt paths above sidestep):

cargo install doctrine

Then bootstrap a project:

cd my_project || mkdir my_project

doctrine install                  # prompts to confirm; or use --dry-run | --yes
npx skills add davidlee/doctrine  # or `doctrine install --agent claude` for claude code only

doctrine slice new "add killer feature"

or install from source (customise templates / skills):

gh repo clone davidlee/doctrine && cd doctrine

# optional: 
# customise install/templates and/or plugins/skills
# they'll get bundled into the binary for installation

cargo install --path .

or use it as a nix flake:

inputs.doctrine.url = "github:davidlee/doctrine";
# ...
doctrine = inputs.doctrine.packages.${system}.doctrine;

to install skills for other agents:

npx skills add davidlee/doctrine # or your fork 

Post-Install Setup

mkdir my-project && cd my-project
git init 
mkdir .claude 

# these are also the 'I updated doctrine' routine:
doctrine install -y 
npx skills add davidlee/doctrine --agent universal -y

cat .gitignore # check & adjust to taste

git add -A && git commit -m "chore: doctrine install"

Memory-only use

Use Doctrine's memory system with your preferred tooling for the rest:

cd my-project
doctrine install --agent claude --only-memory -y 

# doctrine memory help
# doctrine memory record --type pattern "red/green/refactor TDD" --glob "src/lib/**/*" --summary "..."
# doctrine memory list

Usage

doctrine slice new "add killer feature"

Doctrine ships with self-documenting agent memories.

The agent should be able to steer while you get used to the default workflow.

Hack

templates:

$EDITOR .doctrine/templates

skills:

rm .claude/skills/code-review # remove symlink
cp -r .doctrine/skills/code-review/ .claude/skills/

$EDITOR .claude/skills/code-review/SKILL.md
git add -f .claude/skills/code-review/SKILL.md

doctrine install # skips existing non-symlinks

or:

gh repo fork davidlee/doctrine --clone
cd doctrine
$EDITOR doctrine/plugins/review
git commit -m "feat: review like a pirate" && git push
cargo install --path .             # build with your edits

# in your projects
doctrine install --agent claude --yes # from binary, or
npx skills add my-github/doctrine

License

This repository is multi-licensed:

• Rust source code, application code, and compiled binaries are licensed under GPL-3.0-only.
• Files under plugins/ are licensed under MIT.
• Files under install/ are licensed under MIT, including templates and config.toml.

Where a file contains an SPDX license identifier or a directory contains its own LICENSE file, that more specific notice controls.

Acknowledgements

The /worktree skill's directory-selection and safety-verification patterns are adapted from superpowers:using-git-worktrees by Jesse Vincent (MIT).

Specifications

Product and technical specifications — the durable, agent-readable intent behind Doctrine's capabilities. Regenerate this list with just readme-index.