Why build our own?
The question comes up regularly: why not just take GitHub Spec Kit or another ready-made framework?
These are two different things
Section titled “These are two different things”A framework like Spec Kit is a way of working: specify first, then plan, then implement. This marketplace is a delivery channel for AWL knowledge: how our templates are built, what the pipeline components are called, how to deploy to Natron, what the @awl/* packages already solve. That knowledge is in no public framework, however good it is.
The two do not exclude each other. If you want to work spec-driven, you can do that with these plugins.
What we get out of it
Section titled “What we get out of it”- We own the stack. Skills are Markdown files in our GitLab. No vendor changes how we work overnight.
- Our process, not a generic one. The path from story to deploy reflects how AWL actually ships – with ClickUp, GitLab, ArgoCD.
- Knowledge from real projects. The
pre-deploy-checkconsists of checks that would each have prevented a failed deployment. - A reviewed supply chain. Hooks run with full user privileges. Every hook in this repository is reviewed; for third-party plugins we do not know that.
What it costs
Section titled “What it costs”Maintenance. That is why as much as possible is automated: versions, validation, template drift, the npm package docs and this site all run through CI. What a ready-made framework does better – a good-looking guide on how to work with it – is the reason this site exists.