A one-time setup routine for a fresh code checkout. It installs the exact pinned version of the project’s validation tool and the named programming tools, then checks that the governed development loop works.

It is for preparing a new clone, fetching the required base revision, checking tool versions, and running the project’s initial validation checks.

It prevents a local tool version from disagreeing with the version used by CI, the automated service that checks changes. It also exposes missing tools before regular work begins.

How statecrafting/spec-spine configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to statecrafting/spec-spine. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/statecrafting/spec-spine/main/.claude/skills/setup/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/statecrafting/spec-spine

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/statecrafting/spec-spine/setup/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/statecrafting/spec-spine/setup)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/statecrafting/spec-spine/setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/statecrafting/spec-spine/setup/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/statecrafting/spec-spine/setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/statecrafting/spec-spine/setup.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 978 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00045	$0.00978
Opus 5.5	$0.00018	$0.00391
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00009	$0.00196
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00098

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 5840cf8c02a5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

setup scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/setup/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/setup

Get a fresh clone operational. After this completes, /prime can report lifecycle and structural counts through spec-spine, never by ad-hoc parsing of .statecraft/derived/**/*.json (AGENTS.md "Governed artifact reads").

Process

1. Install the pinned spec-spine

AGENTS.md pins the version and names the invocation (a binary on PATH, a package wrapper, or an in-tree build). CI runs the pinned one, so a local pass on another version proves nothing: a different version is a halt. Any one route:

cargo install spec-spine-cli --version <pin> --locked   # with a Rust toolchain
npm i -g spec-spine@<pin>                               # prebuilt binary, no toolchain
uvx spec-spine@<pin> --version                          # Python, ephemeral

Verify: spec-spine --version prints the pin. When AGENTS.md says the binary is built from this checkout, build it as it says instead and use that path for every command below.

2. Stack toolchain

Install whatever AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md) names for the language gates: a pinned toolchain file, a package manager, optional linters. Report each as present or absent; a missing optional tool is a note, a missing required one is a halt. jq is a convenience the hooks in .claude/settings.json use; each hook says what it skipped when jq is absent.

3. Fetch the base ref

The coupling gate diffs against the default branch on the remote:

git fetch origin main

4. Verify the governed loop

Run the gate exactly as AGENTS.md "Working the backlog" lists it under "Run the gate before every commit". The governance floor is:

spec-spine compile
spec-spine index
sh scripts/statecraft/gate.sh governance
BASE_SHA="$(git symbolic-ref --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null || echo origin/main)" \
  HEAD_SHA=HEAD sh scripts/statecraft/gate.sh couple
sh scripts/statecraft/gate.sh code

then the stack's own build, tests, and lints. On a clean checkout compile and index are deterministic no-ops; if git status --short -- .statecraft/derived/ shows a diff afterwards, the committed shards were stale. Say so and leave the diff for the session to commit (chore(derived): ...); do not hide it. Halt on the first failing step and surface its output verbatim.

Read the full file on GitHub · 112 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

1mo ago Changed · -3 lines 5840cf8c02a5
1mo ago Changed 911258f07267
1mo ago Changed e7a849cce147
1mo ago Changed 587511d705e7
2mo ago First seen · 115 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 5d9139e52e00

Subscribe to this mod's changes

setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository statecrafting/spec-spine (11 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 978 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-07.

CI and CD DevOps and cloud

setup next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
setupstatecrafting/spec-spine	Skill	11	8d ago	Apache-2.0	A	45	Claude Code
chinese-git-workflowjnMetaCode/superpowers-zh	Skill	8.5k	11d ago	MIT	A	69	Claude Code
atmos-profilescloudposse/atmos	Skill	1.4k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	35	Claude Code
webhook-managementhoangsonww/Claude-Code-Agent-Monitor	Skill	1.1k	yesterday	MIT	A	56	Claude Code, Codex
monorepo-managementwshobson/agents	Skill	42k	yesterday	MIT	C	54	Claude Code
managing-github-actions-secretsPostHog/posthog-foss	Skill	728	yesterday	MIT	A	67	Claude Code, Codex
postman-newman-automationLambdaTest/agent-skills	Skill	390	yesterday	MIT	A	156	Claude Code, Codex

spec-spine: Skill for Claude Code