Your First Feature

With your repository connected and the plugin installed, you're ready to build your first feature with CodeLantern. A feature moves through the workflow as a chain of small skills. Each one takes the work forward a step, with you in the loop the whole way.

We'll start with /cl-dev:spec, the skill that turns a rough idea into a well-formed issue. It's the natural front door to everything else.

Before you begin

Make sure the earlier steps are done:

• Your repository is connected in the portal (see Connect Your Repository).
• The cl-dev plugin is installed in your coding agent (see Install the Plugin).
• You've run /cl-dev:init once in the repo (and /cl-dev:set-context if you're resuming existing work).

Step 1: Spec your idea

/cl-dev:spec interviews you about what you want to build and writes it up as a structured issue with testable acceptance criteria: concrete conditions that let anyone tell when the work is truly done. Instead of a vague "add search," you end up with an issue that spells out the expected behavior, edge cases, and what "finished" means.

Invoke it in your coding agent and describe your request in plain language:

/cl-dev:spec add a search box to the docs site that filters pages by title

The skill asks a few focused questions to sharpen scope and fill gaps, then creates the issue in your project, either GitHub or Linear, depending on how that repo is configured. When it's done, you'll have a real, linkable issue ready for the rest of the workflow.

Step 2: Take it through the workflow

Each skill ends by pointing you to the next one, so you're never guessing what to do. Here's the path from your fresh issue to a merged change:

• /cl-dev:claim-issue: Claims the issue and sets up your working surface, a feature branch and a draft pull request to build against.
• /cl-dev:create-impl-plan: Turns the issue into a phased implementation plan your agent can execute step by step.
• /cl-dev:implement: Works through the approved plan phase by phase, writing code and keeping the pull request up to date as it goes.
• /cl-dev:review-code: Reviews the resulting diff for correctness, tests, and quality, and surfaces findings before anything is finalized.

You invoke each one the same way you invoked /cl-dev:spec: type the command and let the skill guide you. For larger or riskier work, there are extra steps in between (design and review), and any step can be handed to the CodeLantern cloud agent with /cl-dev:handoff when you'd rather not run it locally.

That's your first feature: specified, built, reviewed, and ready to merge.

Where to go next