Does Solo Dev Suite require any external dependencies or pip installs?

No, the entire suite runs on Python's standard library with zero external dependencies. There are no pip installs or virtual environments required, which means no dependency rot down the road.

How does Solo Dev Suite handle context when switching between different phases of a project?

Every skill in the suite reads from a central project profile, so context travels with the project rather than requiring you to re-establish it manually each time. Skills also write back to the profile, meaning information gathered in one skill (like a dependency audit) is automatically available to related skills.

What phases of a software project does Solo Dev Suite cover?

It covers the full solo project lifecycle: idea validation, scoping, architecture, building, shipping, growth, and long-term sustainment. There are 13 skills and 2 plugins mapped to meaningful decision points across all these stages.

How does the orchestrator skill decide which skills to show you?

The solo-dev-suite orchestrator loads your project profile and filters the skill menu down to only the options relevant to your current project phase. This means you won't be overwhelmed with all 13 skills at once when you're focused on a specific stage like a build sprint.

Solo Dev Suite

What It Is

Solo Dev Suite is a collection of 13 skills and 2 plugins for Claude Code that cover the full lifecycle of a solo software project, from the first “is this even a good idea?” all the way through long-term sustainment. Think of it as a structured co-pilot that knows where your project stands and hands you exactly the right tool for the current phase.

The core insight behind it: when you’re building alone, the overhead of re-establishing context every time you switch from, say, architecture decisions to sprint planning is genuinely exhausting. Every skill in the suite reads from a central project profile, so the context travels with the project, not with you.

Why I Built It

I kept finding myself doing the same mental heavy lifting on repeat, scope creep audits, security checklists, dependency risk reviews and doing them inconsistently because I was starting from scratch each time. I wanted something opinionated enough to push back on bad decisions, but flexible enough to slot into however a project was actually progressing. So I mapped out the lifecycle stages I actually move through (idea → scope → architecture → build → ship → grow → sustain) and built a skill for each meaningful decision point along the way.

What’s Interesting About the Approach

The orchestrator skill (solo-dev-suite) acts as a router, it loads your project profile and filters the skill menu down to only what’s relevant for your current phase. You’re not staring at a list of 13 options when you’re in the middle of a build sprint.

What I’m especially happy with is the cross-skill data flow. Skills don’t just overload the profile, they write back to it. For example, integration-mapper populates a third_party_services summary after a dependency audit, and security-audit picks that up automatically to tailor its checklist. The skills compound on each other without requiring you to manually copypasta information between them.

A few other design details I care about:

Zero external dependencies. The whole thing runs on Python stdlib. No pip installs, no virtual environments, no dependency rot six months from now.
Atomic writes. Profile updates write to a .tmp file first, then rename. It’s a small thing, but mid-write corruption in a project profile would be a miserable experience to debug.
Self-contained skills. Each skill carries its own scripts and templates, so they’re portable and easy to reason about independently.

The Skills at a Glance

A few highlights across the lifecycle:

mvp-scope-guardian: 4-bucket scope lock with active creep detection. Useful early and often.
integration-mapper: 3D risk scoring for third-party dependencies. Helps you know what you’re actually betting on.
launch-readiness: A 9-category pre-ship gate. The kind of checklist you know you should run but always skip.
market-feasibility (plugin): A 7-dimension feasibility study that returns an honest GO/NO-GO verdict before you write a line of code.
software-valuation (plugin): Pricing strategy analysis that can work from a local codebase or a public repo URL.

solo-dev-suite/
skills/
solo-dev-suite/ # Master orchestrator
profiles/.json # Your project profiles (gitignored)
profiles/example.json # Template to copy
data/children.json # Skill registry
scripts/profile_io.py # Profile CRUD
scripts/list_skills.py # Phase-aware skill menu
mvp-scope-guardian/ # Child skill
saas-pricing-architect/ # Child skill
… # (11 more)
plugins/
market-feasibility/ # Pre-project feasibility plugin
software-valuation/ # Pre-project valuation pluginCode language: PHP (php)

Tech Stack

The skills and orchestration logic are written in Python, with install scripts in Shell and PowerShell for Linux/macOS and Windows respectively. The plugin interfaces are in TypeScript, and a small amount of HTML is used for generated output templates.

The project is self-hosted on Forgejo and also on GitHub. It is actively maintained under the MIT license.