Pathmode plugin for Claude Code

Turn a vague feature idea into a spec your coding agent can build against. One install gives you the @pathmode/mcp-server plus a skill pack for preflighting, compiling, grilling, verifying, and handing off intent specs.

The plugin is free. It uses the models you already have access to in Claude Code, so there is nothing to configure and no key to paste. Run /preflight (or just ask Claude to run a preflight) for a deterministic verdict on whether your intent is ready for an agent: six calibrated gates, the exact blockers named, the same result every run. No spec yet? /preflight drafts a provisional one from your conversation, marks its assumptions, and preflights that — the first run always ends in a verdict. The same gate runs live in your browser at preflight.pathmode.io.

/plugin marketplace add pathmodeio/claude-plugin
/plugin install pathmode@pathmode

No API key needed. Keyless installs run in local mode: specs live in intent.md in your project, nothing leaves your machine, and 9 local MCP tools are available (including check_intent_readiness, the deterministic preflight, and confirm_intent_dimension to resolve a gate that read your text but could not confirm it).

To sync with a Pathmode workspace (27 tools: evidence queries, intent graph, verification recording), create an API key at pathmode.io/settings and enter it when the plugin prompts for configuration. The key is stored in your OS keychain, never in a config file.

MCP server — @pathmode/mcp-server (via npx, always latest), configured automatically. Local mode with no key; cloud mode with one.

Command — /preflight runs the deterministic six-gate readiness check and always ends in a verdict: on your intent.md if one exists, on a spec described in the conversation, or on a provisional draft it builds from context with assumptions marked.

Skills — auto-trigger from what you ask Claude, in rough lifecycle order:

Session hook — when a session starts in a repo that has an intent.md (root or .pathmode/intents/), one line of state is added to Claude's context: the intent's title, its status, and how far it has drifted from the work (days since it was edited, commits since). That is all it does. It reads the file and your git log locally, never sends anything anywhere, works without an API key, and stays completely silent in repos with no intent. If you would rather it did not run, remove the SessionStart entry from hooks/hooks.json.

/preflight is deterministic, which means its judgment is only as good as what it was tuned against. That tuning set is in this repo, so you can check it rather than take the number on faith.

readiness-corpus.json holds 98 hand-labeled spec fragments, 51 labeled good and 47 labeled vague, spread across the gates: 24 objectives, 24 outcomes, 20 titles, 18 constraints, 12 verification checks. Each item carries the text, the label, and the tags that explain the call:

{ "kind": "objective",
  "text": "Make the dashboard better.",
  "label": "vague",
  "tags": ["genuinely-vague", "no-actor", "platitude"] }

Two things follow from publishing it. The gates are calibrated heuristics, not natural language understanding, and the corpus makes the exact boundary visible instead of arguable in the abstract. And if you think a label is wrong, that is a concrete disagreement about a specific line, which is worth more to us than a general objection. Open an issue.

Pathmode's CI runs both implementations of the gate, the browser one and the one in the MCP server, across this entire corpus and fails on any divergence, so the verdict you get in the terminal is the verdict the demo page gives.

The plugin registers its own pathmode MCP server, so remove the older entry from your project .mcp.json (or claude_desktop_config.json) to avoid a duplicate. Skills previously copied into .claude/skills/ via install-skills can also be deleted — the plugin's copies supersede them.

• skills/ is a synced copy of packages/mcp-server/skills/ — edit there, then run node scripts/sync-skills.mjs. Never edit the copies. commands/ is plugin-native and hand-authored here (sync-skills does not touch it); keep /preflight aligned with the preflight skill's invariants.
• Validate before release: claude plugin validate packages/claude-plugin --strict
• Distribution: this directory is published as the public pathmodeio/claude-plugin repo (plugin and marketplace in one, source: "./"). Bump version in .claude-plugin/plugin.json on every release — installed plugins auto-update.
• The server reads the key from PATHMODE_API_KEY, injected from the keychain-backed ${user_config.api_key}. Blank or unsubstituted values fall through to keyless local mode (guarded in the server's loadConfig).