speckit-constitution

/speckit.constitution — “Create or update project governing principles and development guidelines.” The first phase of the Spec Kit workflow: it establishes the project’s immutable architectural principles in .specify/memory/constitution.md — described as nine numbered “articles” (I–III universal: library-first design, CLI interfaces, test-driven development; IV–VI project-defined; VII–IX mandating simplicity, anti-abstraction, and integration-first testing).

The constitution is “the architectural DNA of the system, ensuring that every generated implementation maintains consistency.” It is not consumed and discarded like a per-change spec — it persists and is the reference every later phase is checked against: speckit-plan validates its choices against the constitution through “phase gates,” and speckit-analyze audits all artifacts for constitutional compliance.

Why it maps to align (with a caveat)

This is Spec Kit’s signature capability and it has no counterpart in any other framework here — GSD, Matt Pocock, Addy, and OpenSpec all embed principles inside individual skills rather than externalizing them into one governing document. It is filed under stage-align as the most generic fit (agreeing the rules of engagement before building), but it is really a governance-setup activity that sits upstream of the per-change lifecycle. See the stage-govern split candidate parked on stage-align — it needs a second framework’s evidence before it could become a canonical stage.

See Also

• speckit — the framework.
• artifact-constitution — the document it produces.
• pattern-project-constitution — the technique it embodies.
• speckit-analyze — the gate that enforces the constitution across all artifacts.