Constitution

The Constitution establishes the ground rules for how the AI should behave during the workflow.
It defines:

• Project values and constraints

• Coding standards and architectural preferences

• Expectations around testing, documentation, and quality

This phase ensures that all subsequent reasoning and implementation aligns with the team’s norms and the existing codebase. You only need to generate a constitution once when you first initialize Spec Kit in your project.

✏️ Steps

Create a Spec Kit Constitution

1. Run the prompt: /speckit.constitution <optional context>

2. This command will automatically look in your codebase and try to derive rules and guidelines for the constitution. You can also provide <optional context>, which will guide the AI in what the rules should look like.

3. This command may also modify the template files in .specify/templates to better align with the principles it establishes.

4. Be sure to commit your code once this finishes running

Walkthrough Images

Locate the constitution.md file and look at the default template

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Run the /speckit.constitution prompt

View the output results and chat with the speckit.constitution agent to make any requested changes.

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Next Steps

Continue on to create your first spec and start implementing a feature

SpecPreview