Specky 3.9.0 — Cursor-native hooks, dedicated phase skills, and doctor parity

Copy-paste body for the GitHub Release v3.9.0.

Specky 3.9.0 brings the Cursor target to full functional parity with Claude and Copilot — native hook automation, a dedicated always-on rule, and six new phase companion skills — and levels up specky doctor with per-target install validation. It also fixes cross-target instruction leakage in the Copilot and compile paths.

Highlights

Cursor-native hook automation

specky install --target=cursor now installs a complete, honest hook stack instead of skipping hooks:

• .cursor/hooks.json — Cursor schema v1 manifest generated from the single .apm/hooks/sdd-hooks.json source.
• .cursor/hooks/specky-run.sh — stdin adapter that maps Cursor hook payloads to the Specky hook scripts (SDD_TOOL_NAME, prompt extraction), with graceful jq-optional fallback.
• .cursor/hooks/scripts/ — the same 16 hook scripts used by Claude and Copilot.

Blocking gates (artifact validation, phase gate, security scan, release gate) deny unsafe actions with failClosed: true; advisory gates (branch, pipeline guard, LGTM, drift, checkpoint) warn without blocking.

Six dedicated phase companion skills (14 total)

Each pipeline phase agent now loads a dedicated skill first, with specky-sdd-pipeline retained as the shared cross-phase overview:

• specky-sdd-init (Phase 0), specky-spec-engineer (Phase 2), specky-sdd-clarify (Phase 3), specky-design-architect (Phase 4), specky-task-planner (Phase 5), specky-quality-reviewer (Phase 6).

Dedicated, leak-free instruction rules

• Cursor compiles to .cursor/rules/specky-sdd.mdc with alwaysApply and a neutral title.
• Claude compiles to .claude/rules/specky-sdd.md with neutral naming — no Copilot title, @workspace, or .vscode references.
• Copilot keeps its reserved .github/instructions/copilot-instructions.instructions.md, with the orphaned Rule #7/#8 headings merged into the Key Rules list and the outdated @workspace /prompt-name invocation corrected to /prompt-name.

specky doctor install parity

doctor now runs a full per-target install audit — agent, prompt/command, skill, and hook-script counts, rule format, MCP registration, and a cross-target leakage scan:

Cross-target isolation fixes

• Copilot installs no longer copy the Cursor/Claude instruction primitives into .github/instructions/; only the Copilot instruction is installed and stale primitives are removed.
• specky compile is now target-aware — each target renders only its own instruction primitive (Copilot as the neutral fallback) instead of concatenating every primitive into each root context file.
• Claude installs no longer receive the Copilot-named rule or @workspace/applyTo leakage.

Unified EARS notation

The rule, phase agents, and the specky-sdd-pipeline skill now use the canonical six EARS patterns: Ubiquitous, Event-driven, State-driven, Optional, Unwanted, and Complex.

Validation

• npm run build passed.
• npm test passed.
• specky apm validate, specky apm policy, and specky apm verify-lock passed.
• Smoke installs for all five targets (cursor, copilot, claude, opencode, agent-skills) pass their specky doctor checks with no cross-target leakage.

Upgrade

npm install -g specky-sdd@latest
cd your-project
specky upgrade

For project-local installs:

npm install --save-dev specky-sdd@latest
npx specky upgrade

Cursor users gain native hooks on upgrade; enable the specky MCP server in Cursor Settings → MCP, then run specky doctor to confirm the install.

Full details: CHANGELOG.md