seed

seed

Configures the auto-engineer toolkit for a target project. Always runs from within this auto-engineer repo — it never copies itself. Reads templates from templates/ (relative to this repo's root), substitutes {{PLACEHOLDER}} values, and writes the results into the target project.

Does not touch any pre-existing .claude/ directory in the target. Skills are written into .claude/skills/ but only for skill names that don't already exist there. settings.local.json and .claude/.gitignore are only created if absent.

When to invoke

• User says "seed a project", "set up auto-engineer", "configure the loop", or /seed.
• Accepts an optional positional argument: the path to the target project.
• If no path is given as an argument, ask for it as the first action (before any detection).

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Step 0 — Get the target path

If the user did not provide a path as an argument, ask:

"What's the path to the project you want to seed? (absolute or relative to your home directory)"

Resolve to an absolute path. Verify the directory exists. If it doesn't exist, ask whether to create it. Abort with a clear error if the user declines creation and the path is missing.

All subsequent file reads and writes use <target>/ as the root.

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Phase 1 — Detect project state

cd into the target directory for all detection commands. Determine whether this is an existing project (has .git) or a new project (no git history yet).

Existing project detection

Run these in parallel from <target>/:

# GitHub owner/repo
gh repo view --json owner,name --jq '"\(.owner.login)/\(.name)"'

# Current authenticated user (for assignee default)
gh api user --jq .login

# Existing labels
gh label list --json name,description --limit 100

# CI workflows
ls .github/workflows/*.yml 2>/dev/null || true

Also scan for tech stack indicators by checking for file existence in <target>/:

File	Stack	Default commands
Cargo.toml	Rust	build: cargo build, test: cargo test, format: cargo fmt --all, lint-fix: cargo clippy --fix --allow-dirty --allow-staged && cargo fmt --all
go.mod	Go	build: go build ./..., test: go test ./..., format: gofmt -w ., lint-fix: golangci-lint run --fix
package.json	Node/TS	build: npm run build, test: npm test, format: npm run format, lint-fix: npm run lint --fix
pyproject.toml or setup.py	Python	build: python -m build, test: pytest, format: ruff format ., lint-fix: ruff check --fix .
Makefile	Make-based	Read the Makefile for targets: look for build, test, lint, format
None of the above	Unknown	Will need to prompt user