Spec Kit — CLI setup

The Spec Kit plugin drives the specify command-line tool. Every other speckit skill assumes specify is installed and on PATH. This skill detects it and installs it when it is missing.

Detect first

Always check availability before doing anything else:

specify --version

• Prints a version (e.g. specify 0.11.8) → the CLI is installed. If a skill needs bundle or workflow step, ensure the version is >= 0.11; if it is older, hand off to the speckit-self skill to upgrade.
• command not found / non-zero exit → not installed. Install it (below).

Install

Spec Kit's specify CLI is distributed from its Git repository. uv is the recommended installer; pipx is an alternative. This plugin targets specify 0.11.8 (see the README "Versioning" note), so install that tag (or a newer release):

# Recommended: uv (persistent install)
uv tool install specify-cli --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@v0.11.8

# Alternative: pipx (persistent install)
pipx install "specify-cli @ git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@v0.11.8"

# One-off / ephemeral (no install) — handy to bootstrap a project
uvx --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@v0.11.8 specify init . --integration copilot --integration-options="--skills"

If neither uv nor pipx is available, tell the user to install uv first (curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh, or see https://docs.astral.sh/uv/), then re-run the install. Do not silently install system Python packages.

Verify

specify --version
specify check

Notes

• This skill is the prerequisite for the rest of the plugin. If any speckit skill finds that specify is not available, it should run this skill's detect/install steps first, then retry.
• For an already-installed CLI that just needs a newer version, prefer the speckit-self skill (specify self upgrade) over reinstalling.
• Replace @v0.11.8 with the latest tag from https://github.com/github/spec-kit/releases if you intentionally want the newest release rather than the version this plugin targets.