AI_Workflow

Chapter 03 — Slash Commands

Day-1 question: “How do I stop typing the same prompt 20 times?” Time budget: 30 minutes You’ll finish with: The 30-command starter kit installed in a project of yours, and one custom command you wrote yourself.

Day-1 minimum: the starter kit

Slash commands are prompt templates stored as files. When you type /commit, Claude reads .claude/commands/commit.md and follows the instructions in that file. That’s the whole mechanism.

The starter kit ships 30 commands across 7 families — every command TurtleWolfe uses on a daily basis. The ones excluded from the starter kit (orchestration, governance, wireframe pipeline, knowledge curation) need additional infrastructure to be useful, so they live in Chapter 05 and the full reference.

The 30 starter-kit commands

Family	Commands	Family doc
Priming	`prep`, `prime`, `prime_repositories`	catalog/priming.md
SpecKit	`speckit.specify`, `speckit.clarify`, `speckit.plan`, `speckit.tasks`, `speckit.implement`, `speckit.analyze`, `speckit.checklist`, `speckit.constitution`, `speckit.taskstoissues`, `speckit.workflow`	catalog/speckit.md
Git	`commit`, `ship`	catalog/git.md
Quality	`code-review`, `security-audit`, `secrets-scan`, `audit`	catalog/quality.md
Testing	`test`, `test-a11y`, `test-components`, `test-fail`, `test-hooks`	catalog/testing.md
Session	`session-stats`, `session-summary`, `status`, `clean-start`	catalog/session.md
Reading	`read-spec`, `read-issues`	catalog/session.md

9 of the 10 SpecKit commands (speckit.specify through speckit.taskstoissues) are byte-identical copies of the 9 official commands shipped by github/spec-kit at v0.5.0+ (verified active, latest release 2026-04-02). The 10th (speckit.workflow) is a TurtleWolfe-authored orchestrator that runs the full SpecKit chain end-to-end with one command.

The 5 quality/testing/git/session/reading families are 100% TurtleWolfe-authored — wrappers around lint, type-check, conventional commits, Docker exec, and the SpecKit workflow. They depend on the project being Docker-first.

All 30 are ready to copy from starter-kit/.claude/commands/. Drop them in your project’s .claude/commands/ directory and they work immediately.

Start here: exercise.md — install all 30 in your project, then write your first custom command.

Prerequisites for the SpecKit family

The 10 SpecKit commands assume github/spec-kit is initialized in your project (.specify/ directory present). If it’s not, the commands will tell you to run specify init first. Two install paths:

# Persistent install (recommended) — replace v0.5.0 with the current latest
uv tool install specify-cli --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@v0.5.0
specify init                       # initialize in current project

# Or one-time usage
uvx --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git@v0.5.0 specify init

(Latest version verified 2026-04-06: v0.5.0, published 2026-04-02. Check SpecKit releases for the current tag.)

For interns: the hello-world-ai starter ships with .specify/ already initialized so Day 1 works without an extra install step. For your own projects, run specify init once after git init.

Dig deeper

Command catalog

The catalog/ directory has one doc per command family:

priming.md — /prep, /prime [role], /prime_repositories
speckit.md — the full SpecKit feature loop and the 10 commands that drive it
quality.md — /code-review, /security-audit, /secrets-scan, /audit
testing.md — /test and the 4 narrower test commands
git.md — /commit, /ship
session.md — /session-stats, /session-summary, /status, /clean-start, /read-spec, /read-issues

Beyond the starter kit

The starter kit is 30 commands. TurtleWolfe’s full live setup is 65 commands. The other 35 fall into four families that need additional infrastructure to be useful:

Family	Commands	Why not in starter kit	Where to learn
Orchestration	`dispatch`, `queue`, `queue-check`, `review-queue`, `next`, `log`, `refresh-inventories`	Need the 27-terminal tmux assembly line	Chapter 05
Governance/RFCs	`rfc`, `rfc-vote`, `vote-now`, `council`, `broadcast`, `memo`	Need a council of role-based terminals	Chapter 05
Wireframe pipeline	`wireframe`, `wireframe-plan`, `wireframe-prep`, `wireframe-focused`, `wireframe-fix`, `wireframe-review`, `wireframe-inspect`, `wireframe-screenshots`, `wireframe-status`, `hot-reload-viewer`, `viewer-status`	Need a `validate-wireframe.py` script and a viewer container	Chapter 05
Knowledge curation	`clean-transcript`, `extract-linkedin`, `rpg_subsystem_scaffold`	TranScripts-style helpers — see Chapter 02	02 / knowledge-bases.md

When you’re ready, the exercise ends with a one-line install for the full set:

bash ~/repos/AI_Workflow/03-slash-commands/install-full-kit.sh

That copies the remaining 35 commands from ~/repos/Claude_Commandz/global/.claude/commands/ into your global ~/.claude/commands/. (You only need to do this once globally — it’s not per-project.)

Anatomy of a slash command

Every slash command is a markdown file at .claude/commands/<name>.md with this shape:

---
description: One-sentence description shown in the command list
scope: personal | project
---

Prose instructions for Claude. Use markdown headers to organize sections.

## Instructions

1. Step one
2. Step two
3. Step three

## Output

What Claude should say when done.

description — shown in /help and fuzzy search. Keep it under 80 characters.
scope: personal — only available in projects where you’ve copied the file in. Most starter-kit commands are personal.
scope: project — shipped with a specific project. SpecKit commands are usually project-scoped because they depend on .specify/ scripts in the repo.
Body — the actual prompt. Be specific. Use numbered steps. Tell Claude what output you want.

Files can be as short as 12 lines (starter-kit/.claude/commands/prep.md) or as long as 530 lines (starter-kit/.claude/commands/speckit.workflow.md). Start short.

When to write your own vs use a built-in

Built-in Claude Code commands (/help, /clear, /model, /fast) — can’t override. Don’t try.
The 30 starter-kit commands — copy and use as-is. Modify only if you have a specific reason.
Your own commands — write one when you notice yourself typing the same 5-sentence prompt three times in a week. That’s the signal.

Exercise

exercise.md — Install the 30-command starter kit in a project. Then write your own custom command that automates a repetitive prompt you’ve already noticed yourself repeating. 30 minutes.

Previous: Chapter 02 — Give It Context · Next: Chapter 04 — The SpecKit Loop · All parts: the series in order

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