Quick Start

Get Tierward running in your project in under two minutes.

Requirements

• Node.js 22 or later
• Claude Code installed and active in your project

Claude Code-only

Tierward's enforcement layer — Stop hook, STOP gates, audit skills — is built on Claude Code primitives (settings.json, pipeline.md, the agent skill system). It does not support Cursor, Copilot, or other AI coding tools. This is a deliberate architectural choice; see Claude Code-first, by design in the README for the reasoning.

Run the wizard

npx tierward init

The wizard detects your project state and asks a few questions: team size, tech stack, which features you have (API, database, frontend, design system). It then scaffolds the right pipeline, rules, and audit skills for your setup.

Three paths are available:

Path	Use when
Existing project	Add structure to a project that already has code
New project	Starting from scratch
From existing docs	You have a spec or requirements doc; Claude reads it and populates everything

After the wizard completes, open Claude Code. The scaffold is active immediately, no restart needed.

What gets scaffolded

your-project/
├── CLAUDE.md                    # Project context
├── .claude/
│   ├── settings.json            # Permissions + Stop hook
│   ├── rules/
│   │   ├── pipeline.md          # Development workflow
│   │   ├── security.md          # Stack-aware security rules
│   │   ├── git.md               # Commit format and branch rules
│   │   └── output-style.md      # Communication rules
│   └── skills/                  # Audit skills (conditional per project)
├── .github/
│   ├── CODEOWNERS               # Protects .claude/ from unreviewed changes
│   └── PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
└── .pre-commit-config.yaml      # Secret scanning

The exact files depend on your tier and project flags. Run npx tierward doctor after init to confirm everything is in order.

Validate your setup

npx tierward doctor

Doctor runs 29 checks across your scaffold: Stop hook presence, pipeline structure, CODEOWNERS coverage, placeholder residuals, and more. It exits 0 when everything is clean.

npx tierward doctor --report   # JSON output (for CI)
npx tierward doctor --ci       # silent, exits 1 on any failure

Context Builder (optional)

If you want the scaffold to come out the same way every time (or want a written record of the decisions), run context before init:

npx tierward context           # produces CONTEXT.md via interview
npx tierward init              # reads CONTEXT.md, no further prompts
npx tierward context --all     # one-shot: context then init

CONTEXT.md is a schema-validated file that covers tier, stack, team size, and all project flags. Running init from it bypasses the interactive wizard entirely.

Next steps

• Tiers → — which tier fits your team and when to upgrade
• Skills → — full skill library
• Stop hook → — how the enforcement mechanism works