OpenSpec for VS Code
A visual workspace for OpenSpec, the spec-driven development workflow for AI coding agents. See your active changes, living specs, archived work, and workflow schemas in one place without leaving the editor.
Features
The OpenSpec Activity Bar icon opens four views:
| View |
What it shows |
| Active Changes |
Every change in openspec/changes/ with its task progress and next open task (4/18 (22%) · next: 2.1 Add parser). Expand a change to see the artifacts its schema defines. Missing artifacts are marked, delta specs show their + ~ − requirement counts, and tasks are grouped by section. The view's badge shows how many changes are active. |
| Living Specs |
The durable capability specs in openspec/specs/, expandable down to requirements and scenarios. Click a requirement or scenario to jump to it in spec.md. Specs that an active change is about to modify are highlighted and list those pending changes. |
| Archive |
Completed changes, with their proposal, design, tasks, and delta specs. |
| Schemas |
The workflow schemas available to the project (project, user, and built-in), their artifacts, and how those artifacts depend on each other. |
Visual Spec Viewer
Click a change or spec to open a rich, interactive view of it:
- Pipeline rail showing the artifacts that are ready (
Proposal → Specs → Design → Tasks).
- Requirement cards with
ADDED, MODIFIED, REMOVED and RENAMED badges.
- Scenario blocks rendered as
GIVEN / WHEN / THEN.
- Live task checklist that stays in sync with
tasks.md. Watch tasks tick off while your agent works, or check them off yourself.
- Overview and Design tabs for the motivation, scope, decisions, and risks.
Customize workflow schemas
A schema decides which artifacts a change produces and in what order. From the Schemas view you can:
- Customize a schema: fork the built-in
spec-driven schema (or a user schema) into openspec/schemas/ and make it your own. You choose right away whether new changes should use the copy, and the copy is selected in the tree when it is created.
- Compare with Original: a fork remembers where it came from, so you can diff any file against its source. The tree flags a fork when its source has a newer version.
- Create a schema from scratch with the artifacts you need.
- Add or remove artifacts and edit their dependencies. Dependency cycles are caught before anything is written.
- Open templates for each artifact with a single click, or jump to an artifact's definition in
schema.yaml to edit its instruction.
- Validate a schema, and see structural problems in the tree and in the Problems panel.
- Rename or delete project schemas. The project default and active changes that use a schema are kept consistent.
- Set the project default that new changes will use.
Agent-friendly actions
- New Change guided form: describe the change and the extension scaffolds it, using your chosen schema.
- Run in Dedicated Terminal: send OpenSpec slash commands to your coding agent (Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Codex, …) in a reusable terminal.
- Copy AI prompt: get a ready-to-paste prompt for the next unfinished task.
- Validate and Archive changes with the OpenSpec CLI. A change gets an inline Archive button as soon as it is complete, and an inline Validate button until then.
Getting started
- Install the OpenSpec CLI (needed for validation, archiving, and creating schemas):
npm install -g @fission-ai/openspec
- Open a folder that has an
openspec/ directory, or run openspec init in your project.
- Click the OpenSpec icon in the Activity Bar.
- To run slash commands from the extension, pick your coding agent with OpenSpec: Configure Agent Command (or just click a Run in Terminal action, which asks the first time).
Settings
| Setting |
Description |
openspec.terminal.agentCommand |
The command that runs your AI agent in the OpenSpec terminal. Use {command} where the slash command goes, e.g. claude "{command}", gemini -i "{command}", codex "{command}" or agy -i "{command}". Run OpenSpec: Configure Agent Command to pick from presets; the first terminal action offers the same picker while it is unset. |
Commands
All commands are in the Command Palette under OpenSpec:: New Change, Open Visual Spec Viewer, Validate Change, Archive Change, Refresh Specs & Changes, Open Dedicated Terminal, Customize Schema, New Schema, Validate Schema, Set as Project Default Schema, Add Artifact to Schema, Compare with Original, Rename Schema, Delete Schema.
Feedback
Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.
This is an independent community extension for the open-source OpenSpec project.
| |
