Viewer and sidebar

View	Holds	Shows when
Specs	Every spec folder, grouped by where it stands	Always
Bugs, Ideas	Spec Kit’s bug reports and idea assessments	The folder is a Spec Kit project
Living Specs	One row per capability	A folder is open
Steering	The standing files your assistant reads	Unless you turn off `speckit.views.steering.visible`
Settings & Feedback	Shortcuts	You turn on `speckit.views.settings.visible`

Specs

Specs sit under Active, Completed and Archived, and an empty group is hidden. A row is named from its folder, so 515-readable-spec-names reads “Readable Spec Names”. Click the name to open the viewer, or the chevron to expand its documents.

A spec in flight shows its last finished task and how long ago anything happened, like T004 · 22h ago · Claude Code. The assistant’s name appears only when Companion sent the last step itself, because a step you type straight into the assistant isn’t recorded.

Each document under a spec has a mark: a green check when it’s done, a blue dot while in progress, a hollow circle when the file exists and the workflow hasn’t reached it, and not created when it isn’t on disk.

The toolbar has Refresh, Filter, Sort, Collapse All or Expand All, Open Workflow Builder and New Spec. Filter matches the folder slug or the readable name, and an empty value clears it. Sort offers Number (the default, highest first), Name, Date Created, Date Modified and Workflow Step.

Status badges

One stored status drives both the badge in the viewer’s header and the beaker beside the spec.

Stored status	Header badge	Sidebar icon	Group
`draft`	Draft	Plain beaker	Active
`specifying`, `specified`, `planning`, `planned`, `implementing`	The same word, capitalized	Blue beaker	Active
`tasking`	Creating Tasks	Blue beaker	Active
`ready-to-implement`	Tasks Created	Blue beaker	Active
`implemented`	Implemented	Yellow beaker	Active
`completed`	Completed	Green beaker	Completed
`archived`	Archived	Blue or plain beaker	Archived

A spinner replaces the beaker while a step runs. implemented stays under Active because the build finished and you haven’t confirmed it. The hover on a row spells two statuses differently from the badge: “Tasking” and “Ready to Implement”.

Right-click actions

Hover a spec for Resume and More Actions…, or right-click for the same menu.

The More Actions menu on a spec: Set Status, Mark Complete, Archive, Copy Spec Name, Copy Spec Path, Reveal in VS Code Explorer, Reveal in File Manager and Delete. — More Actions on a spec: set its status, complete or archive it, copy its name or path, reveal it, or delete it.

Resume shows on a spec that can still move forward, once the Companion Spec Kit extension is installed (Overview and progress covers it). Set Status… is the way out when the buttons won’t move a spec. Mark Completed shows on active specs, Archive on anything not archived, Reactivate on completed and archived ones, and Converge on implemented and completed ones. Show Terminal appears while the terminal Companion opened for the spec is still open.

Shift-click or cmd-click selects several specs to complete, archive or reactivate together, and right-clicking a group header does it for the whole group.

The other views

Bugs and Ideas list Spec Kit’s bug reports and idea assessments by stage: see Bugs and ideas.

Living Specs offers the Companion install when the extension is missing, then Set up living specs, then one row per capability. Right-click a row to check drift or coverage, or to move, reveal or delete its spec. Living specs explains the counts on each row.

Settings & Feedback holds shortcuts to the Workflow Builder, the settings, the bug and feature forms and the Marketplace rating.

Steering

A spec says what to build this time, and a steering document says how this project builds anything. The view adds no format of its own. It gathers the files your assistant already reads, such as CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md (Settings lists each assistant’s paths), next to Spec Kit’s constitution, scripts and templates.

Rule files, agents, skills and settings are grouped under Project (this repository) and User (you, across every project). A missing section means that thing doesn’t exist here yet. With the Companion Spec Kit extension installed, a Companion node on top opens .specify/companion.yml and lists the installed commands.

New Steering Document, Refine and Delete Steering each hand a prompt to your assistant. Companion never reads these files when it sends a step. The assistant reads its own rules, so a rule that gets ignored is a question for the assistant.

The viewer

The viewer draws a spec’s markdown as a page and never changes the file.

A spec rendered as a structured page: title-leading header, requirements as labeled rows, the pipeline rail, and on-page navigation — Header on top, step rail on the left, the document in the middle, the outline on the right.

The header carries the spec’s name, its status badge, the branch, the creation date and the assistant the last step went to. Under it, the run strip counts tasks done, requirements traced, checks and active time, and links the pull request.

Step tabs

The rail has one tab for each step that writes a document, with the Overview on top.

The pipeline rail with Specification, Plan and Tasks each carrying a green check, Tasks highlighted as the step being read, and the generated task list beside it in two phases — Specification, Plan and Tasks each carry a check. Tasks is the tab being read.

A check means the step is done and its document exists, and a spinner with a timer means it’s running. A disabled tab belongs to a document that doesn’t exist yet while a step ahead of it runs.

Clicking a tab changes what you read and never moves the run. Supporting documents such as Research and Data Model sit under the step that wrote them. Implement and Mark Complete write no document, so they have no tab and their actions live in the footer.

The main button is named after the next step, with a line above it such as Next: Plan. Pressing it records the current step as done and sends the next command to your assistant.

The Tasks tab with the footer reading Next: Implement, then Regenerate, Other actions and Implement. Other actions is open on Analyze and Create GitHub issues. — The footer on a spec with its tasks written: Next: Implement, with Other actions open.

Button	What it does	Shows when
The next step, such as Plan	Closes the current step and sends the next command	You’re on the current step’s tab and the build isn’t done
Regenerate	Runs the current step again	The step has started and the spec is still open
Other actions	Clarify, Checklist, Analyze and Create GitHub issues, plus your custom commands	The menu isn’t empty
Refine (N)	Sends the pending review comments	N comments are pending on this document
Converge	Checks the code against the spec and adds tasks for anything missing	The spec is implemented or completed
Mark Completed	Closes the spec	The spec is implemented
Archive	Shelves the spec	The spec is implemented or completed
Reactivate	Opens a closed spec again	The spec is completed or archived

While a step runs there’s no forward button and the footer reads “Step running, actions unlock when it settles”. A finished spec reads “Run complete”.

How the markdown renders

The step rail and next action: steps unlock in order, one button always points at the next step, and a live percent runs during implement — A specification: a user story as a card, and Given, When and Then picked out in each scenario.

In the markdown	On the page
`- FR-001 The system must ...`	A labelled requirement row. Any prefix of two to five capital letters and a number works.
Given, When and Then in a scenario	The three words emphasized in place
`## Phase N: Title` in `tasks.md`	A phase header, with `MVP` and `(P1)` to `(P5)` drawn as chips
`[P]` on a task line	A marker: the task can run in parallel
`[US2]` on a task line	A marker: the user story the task belongs to
`- [ ]` and `- [x]`	A checkbox per task. During implement the Tasks tab shows a live percentage from them.

A link to another document or another spec opens in the viewer at the heading it names, and a link to a source file opens in the editor beside it. Plan blocks covers the diagrams and cards a plan can carry. Syntax highlighting and Mermaid load from a CDN, so offline you get plain code and diagram source.

Banners

A document written before the one above it changed gets a banner with Regenerate, so editing the spec after the plan exists marks the plan as stale.

The spec viewer on a planned spec with a yellow note above the page reading Plan was moved or deleted, so Specification is showing, and the Specification open beneath it. — plan.md was deleted while it was open, so the viewer fell back to the Specification and named what happened.

If the file on screen is moved or deleted, the viewer switches to a document that still exists and says so. If .spec-context.json can’t be parsed, the spec opens read-only with Reset context, which backs the file up first.