SWE-ATLAS — a senior AI software engineer for Claude Code

The senior-engineer layer for Claude Code. Explore before you build, clarify only what matters, capture it in living HTML, then hand it to Claude Code's native plan / goal / workflow loop. Fewer tokens, less ceremony, faster to the thing people actually pictured.

npx swe-atlas@latest new-project                 # in your current project
npx swe-atlas@latest new-project my-workspace    # …or scaffold a new folder

One command. Full setup. No copy-pasting prompts every session.

ATLAS is an open-source Claude Code template: a curated set of skills, subagents, slash commands, and engineering conventions that turn Claude Code into a production-grade AI software engineer, with a wireframe-and-prototype workflow in place of heavyweight spec-driven development.

It ships in three CLAUDE.md modes, so you choose how much of the wheel to hand over:

• Vanilla — minimal footprint, no ATLAS identity.
• Collaborative (default) — the full senior-engineer identity with a review-and-commit loop; you stay in the driver's seat.
• Autonomous — the approval loop removed and free-will wired in (alongside super-product-owner and super-ui-ux-design): the skill that lets ATLAS decide for itself on the high-stakes forks — hold real alternatives open, ground each in evidence, refute the winner, then log the call in docs/decision_logs/. That's what lets it one-shot an app and run unattended without going off the rails.

The innovation isn't another spec pipeline — it's giving the agent engineered judgment: a way to make the calls a senior engineer would, on its own, and leave a trail you can audit. (Jump to the full mode comparison →)

---

Claude Code already has the engine. ATLAS helps you discover what to build.

Claude Code now plans before it edits, works toward a goal across turns, runs autonomously with safety checks, and orchestrates fleets of subagents, natively, in the box:

Native capability	What it does
Plan mode	Reads the codebase and proposes a plan; touches no files until you approve
/goal	Keeps working across turns until a checked completion condition holds
Auto mode	Approves its own safe tool calls, blocks destructive ones
Dynamic workflows	Writes a script that fans out dozens of subagents and cross-checks their findings

Kick off a workflow — describe the task and ask for a workflow in your own words, or include the keyword ultracode, and Claude writes one for it. Want it always-on? Set /effort ultracode and Claude plans a workflow for every substantive task in the session. (How workflows work →)

That is the execution loop, and it keeps getting better. So ATLAS doesn't try to rebuild it.

What Claude Code still won't do for you is decide what's worth building, prove the shape works before you spend tokens generating it, and leave behind a document you can actually trust. That part is on you. And that part is ATLAS.

Auto mode and dynamic workflows are in research preview at the time of writing; plan mode and /goal are generally available.

---

Why not another spec framework