bassclef

Coding agents know how to code. bassclef helps them know how to build.

Tell bassclef what you're building. It brings the right product and engineering disciplines to the work — from intent through verification and learning.

intent, not commands

Say what you're building. bassclef picks the disciplines from a catalog you can read.

disciplines, not scripts

Personas, JTBD, ADRs, spec, review — the product-work that used to come from a team.

learning, not one-shots

Every session ends with a paragraph the next one reads back — a handoff, not a fresh start.

One click on the confirm email adds you. Unsubscribe anytime.

why one builder needs this now

AI gave you the production capacity of a team. Not the disciplines of one.

Foundation models made one developer produce the output of a small team. The disciplines that surrounded serious engineering — product thinking, planning, standards, review, durable decisions — still have to come from somewhere. bassclef supplies them as files you can read.

product thinking

Personas, JTBD tasks, empathy maps, lean canvas — before code is written.

architecture

ADRs recorded. Deviations challenged with named lenses.

planning

Goals with scope, time budget, personas served, pre-mortem risks — before /build fires.

testing + review

/verify gates commits by change type. Named reviewer roles read against spec.

context durability

Session-end paragraphs pin state. Session-start reads them back. No re-explanation.

accumulated learning

/promote turns a session's discovery into a reusable practice for every future project.

the path from paragraph to PR

Three commands carry the load.

/riff

Sketch it.

You type a paragraph. Claude comes back with 2-3 clickable mocks, each pinned to a different lens.

→
/launch

Plan it.

Pick a mock. Claude drafts a spec, user stories, a build plan, and a lens-shaped review.

→
/build

Ship it.

Claude implements per story, runs /verify, and opens a PR your reviewer can act on. Prod deploy gates on you.

Where this fits, in five short answers

market category
Development substrate. Sits under Claude Code, over your repo. Not an IDE, not a CI, not a workflow tool.
built for today
The serious solo builder using coding agents to run multiple projects or build software past the point where ad-hoc prompting holds together.
not trying to solve yet
Team assignment, cross-team dependency management, enterprise administration, governance. Not commitments — just outside today's wedge.
unique attribute
Three principles: durable session context that survives closing your laptop, practitioner lenses on demand (Cockburn, Norman, Rams), and lifecycle hooks that guardrail each step. Practitioner guidance in files you can read, not baked into the model.
proof
Built by one developer, across multiple repos, using bassclef itself. 99 skills, 93 rules, 88 hooks, 98 luminary profiles running in daily production. apache-2.0. Repo private today; opens publicly at v1.0.

what it's made of

Six building blocks. That's the whole thing.

Everything bassclef is made of, in your repo. Markdown for the plans you write. Shell scripts for the guardrails at Claude Code lifecycle events. JSON schemas for the state that persists. All files, all in your repo, all yours to modify.

block · rule

Rules

Markdown files with your project conventions. Loaded via SessionStart.

block · skill

Skills

Named slash-commands. /onboard-repo, /sprint, /verify. Composable.

block · hook

Hooks

Shell scripts at Claude Code lifecycle points. Gates, checks, formatters.

block · chronicle

Chronicles

Session-end paragraphs pinned to state. Read via /whereami.

block · luminary

Luminaries

98 practitioner profiles. Guidance in the file, model still reasons.

block · state

State spine

Typed JSON per schema. Plain files, browsable.

the rig learns

Catch yourself twice. Encode once. Reuse.

You notice yourself doing something by hand two sessions in a row. You write it as a rule or a skill. bassclef loads it into every future session. You promote what your work taught you into a rule the next session inherits.

discover→ encode→ apply→ verify→ promote

Three reasons this isn't hand-waving.

Status: alpha, in daily production across sibling repos

License: apache-2.0

Cost: free (you'll need Claude Code; that's a separate subscription)

Repo: private for now. Comes with your invite. Goes public at v1.0.

Maintainer: Sunjay Pandey — 20 years across Amazon (AWS, Alexa), Capital One, BP, and bootstrapped startups. Substack ↗

Keep up with bassclef

bassclef is moving quickly. Join the list and I'll write when there's something worth knowing. A new capability, a real learning from running it, a breaking change, or a release. No fixed cadence. Unsubscribe anytime.

Where your confirmation lands. Reply-to comes straight to me.
Helps me spot install and hook bugs by platform. See supported systems for what's tested.
Optional. Used only if I send a private-repo invite before v1.0. Not a guarantee — the repo opens publicly at v1.0 either way.
Which fits you best? (optional)
Helps me write for who's actually on the list.
confirm your email · reply-to-me · unsubscribe anytime · privacy

About the maintainer

Solo builder running multiple software projects in parallel around a day job and family. Started bassclef because thirty minutes of context reconstruction per Claude Code session, across every project, was eating my Saturday mornings.

Two decades across Amazon (AWS, Alexa), Capital One, BP, and bootstrapped startups: cloud infrastructure, consumer tech, regulated finance, industrial, solo-builder. bassclef distills what actually holds across that range. I'm carrying the learnings into the day job, not away from it.

The substrate is one person's opinionated solution. In daily use, growing every day. Shared with a considered early cohort, one operator at a time.

Sunjay on Substack ↗ · [email protected]