HCF (Halt and Catch Fire)

Autonomous development plugin for Claude Code. Define requirements with a PM, then let parallel workers implement everything using TDD.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Getting Started
  • Installation
  • Quick Start
• How It Works
  • Four Phases
  • Pipeline
  • Dependency Graph
  • Parallel Execution
  • TDD Methodology
• Reference
  • Files Created
  • Task Format
  • Skills
  • Outputs
• Architecture
• Advanced Configuration
  • Plans Directory
• Design Principles
• Development
  • Local Testing
  • Testing Workflow
  • Debugging
• Changelog
• Contributing
• License

Overview

HCF separates planning (human-in-the-loop) from execution (fully autonomous):

Planning → Human + AI collaborate on requirements
Execution → Parallel TDD workers implement autonomously

Getting Started

Installation

Add the marketplace, install, then reload:

/plugin marketplace add markshust/hcf
/plugin install hcf@hcf
/reload-plugins

Quick Start

1. Setup Project (one-time)

/project-setup

Interactively configures your project:

• Auto-detects tech stack (Laravel, React, etc.)
• Asks about testing, linting, architecture
• Creates .claude/ config directory

2. Plan a Feature

Just describe what you want:

"Help me implement user authentication with JWT"

The plan-create skill activates automatically to:

• Discover & brainstorm — explore the codebase and enumerate scope/assumption permutations a senior engineer would catch
• Create a feature/{plan-name} branch for the work
• Ask grounded clarifying questions categorized as must-answer vs will-default-if-silent
• Break down into tasks with dependencies
• Write requirements as test descriptions
• Create .claude/plans/user-auth/ with task files (or your configured plans directory)
• Run post-plan pipeline agents (devil's advocate by default) to find gaps before execution

After planning completes, you'll be asked:

Ready to begin autonomous implementation?

1. Yes, start now
2. No, I'll run it later

3. Execute Autonomously

If you chose "later" or want to re-run, say:

"Run the user-auth plan" or "Execute the plan"

The plan-orchestrate skill auto-triggers. It verifies you're on the correct feature/{plan-name} branch before starting.

Session persistence is native to Claude Code — no plugin required. Auto-compaction handles context limits, and all run state (task statuses, requirement checkboxes, retry counts) lives in the plan files, so an interrupted run resumes by re-running the plan. For large plans, you can optionally set a goal first so execution completes unattended:

/goal the user-auth plan run reached a terminal state: plan-orchestrate output ALL_TASKS_COMPLETE or TASKS_BLOCKED

After completion, you'll be prompted to push the branch and create a PR (never done without your permission).

How It Works

Four Phases