Getting Started

Install

Pick one — both land the same files.

Clone it inside the project

cd <project>
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dotkernel/dotboost.git .dotboost
cp -r .dotboost/.claude .claude
rm -rf .dotboost

Download the zip

No git needed:

cd <project>
curl -L -o dotboost.zip https://github.com/dotkernel/dotboost/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
unzip -q dotboost.zip
cp -r dotboost-main/.claude .claude
rm -rf dotboost-main dotboost.zip

After copying, either way

chmod +x .claude/hooks/*.sh .claude/statusline.sh \
         .claude/skills/dependency-policy/scripts/*.sh
echo '.claude/settings.local.json' >> .git/info/exclude

Nothing in the payload is committed with an executable bit, and a zip extracted on Windows carries no permission bits at all — the chmod step is not optional. The settings.local.json line keeps personal, git-ignored overrides out of git add ..

If the target project already has its own .claude/settings.json or .claude/commands/, merge by hand instead of running the copy blind — same-named files are overwritten.

Add the CLAUDE.md block

dependency-policy and the feature-docs check need a short block pasted into the project's own CLAUDE.md to become proactive rather than merely loadable — see Architecture Overview and Dependency Policy.

Optional: markdown linting

.claude/hooks/markdown-lint.sh checks every .md file Claude writes against .claude/markdownlint.jsonc. It needs markdownlint-cli2, not bundled:

npm install -g markdownlint-cli2

A project-local devDependency works too — the hook prefers ./node_modules/.bin/markdownlint-cli2 and falls back to the global one. Until the binary is resolvable the hook exits silently, so .claude/ stays drop-in for projects with no Node toolchain.

Verify

Start Claude Code in the project and run /help — you should see dk-bootstrap, dk-module, dk-route, dk-trace, dk-test, dk-document, dk-check, dk-deprecate, dk-review, dk-hygiene. The session-start hook should open with a short briefing: detected application variant, root namespace, authorization style, branch, and which config files are still missing.

Full end-to-end verification steps, including how to test the guardrails themselves, are in Verifying an Install.