Shipmates

Custom subagents & command workflows for Claude Code.

Stop being your AI's for-loop. Give it a crew. 

One command takes a GitHub issue from open to a reviewed, CI-green pull request — autonomously.

Get the crew aboard View on GitHub
  • MIT licensed
  • 11 specialists
  • Zero config
A /ship-issue run: Plan, Isolate, Build, Self-check, CI gate, Review, Remediate, Deliver — one GitHub issue driven to a reviewed, CI-green pull request. A completed /ship-issue run: Plan, Isolate, Build, Self-check, CI gate, Review, Remediate, Deliver all done — one GitHub issue driven to a reviewed, CI-green pull request handed back to you.
Illustrative — the stages /ship-issue runs, in order.

Come aboard

Get the crew aboard

One line, no clone. Bring the crew aboard for every project, or scope it to a single repo.

Every project (global)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/saman-mb/shipmates/main/install.sh | bash

One repo (project-scoped)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/saman-mb/shipmates/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --project /path/to/your/repo

Prefer to read the script first? Clone the repo and run ./install.sh — same flags. It backs up any file it would overwrite, and --uninstall removes what it installed.

Meet the crew

Eleven Claude Code subagents

Domain-neutral specialists that work on anything — a game engine, a web app, a CLI. The bar they hold you to comes from your repo's README and CLAUDE.md, not the role.

  • architect

    Structure & schema — coupling, boundaries, migration safety.

  • senior-engineer

    Builds to spec, fixes red CI, clears review defects.

  • sdet

    Runs the real tests/build and reports pass/fail with a defect list.

  • security-engineer

    Threat-models the change — authz, injection, secrets, vulnerable deps.

  • site-reliability-engineer

    Reliability, failure modes, rollback safety — and bug root-cause.

  • performance-engineer

    Profiles, benchmarks, and proves the win.

  • product-manager

    Accepts or rejects against the acceptance criteria and your bar.

  • ux-ui-designer

    Specs & reviews on-screen UI — tokens, layout, focus, a11y.

  • art-director

    Directs & reviews rendered visuals — judges the picture.

  • technical-writer

    Writes docs from the real code; proves them with a reader test.

  • data-scientist

    Data/model work — metrics, leakage, validation, reproducibility.

The orders

Command workflows

Reusable command workflows — each one convenes the right crew for a job and drives it to done. Open any order for its full stage-by-stage breakdown.

  • Flagship

    /ship-issue

    Drives issue #n from open → reviewed, CI-green PR with the whole crew.

  • /fix-bug

    Reproduce as a failing test first, root-cause, minimal fix, red→green proof.

  • /plan-epics

    Turns a brief into GitHub epics + linked, labelled user stories, in parallel.

  • /harden

    Threat-models a surface and remediates until every finding is fixed or accepted.

  • /spike

    De-risks a decision — prototypes options in parallel, judges them, records an ADR.

  • /migrate

    Sweeps a migration across every call site, verified, no remnants left.

  • /document

    Writes docs from the real code, gated on a fresh reader completing the steps.

  • /release

    Cuts a release — changelog, CI-green tag, SRE rollback pre-flight, opt-in publish.

  • /polish

    Iterates a visual/UI artifact to a specialist's sign-off — render → critique → fix.

How the voyage works

How /ship-issue takes a GitHub issue to a pull request

It's not a clever prompt — it's a state machine with gates. Eight stages, in order.

  1. Plan

    A planner reads the issue + your docs → build plan, acceptance criteria, validation plan, and which specialists the story needs.

  2. Design specs

    For UI / visual / architecture-heavy stories, the right specialist writes a spec the builders must build to. (Only if needed.)

  3. Isolate

    All work happens in a throwaway git worktree; your base branch never breaks.

  4. Build

    Parallel senior-engineer builders with non-overlapping file ownership.

  5. Self-check → CI gate

    The SDET runs the tests; then CI must go green on the pushed PR before anything moves on. Red? It reads the logs and fixes — bounded.

  6. Acceptance board

    product-manager + sdet (+ gated ux-ui-designer / art-director / architect / security-engineer) review the pushed PR head, adversarially.

  7. Remediate

    Any rejection loops back to a fixer, then re-reviews. Bounded, then escalates to you.

  8. Deliver

    Files the non-blocking nits as follow-ups, and opens (or, opt-in, merges) the PR.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is Shipmates?

A ready-made crew of Claude Code subagents and command workflows. Instead of you playing planner–builder–reviewer in a loop, a board of specialist AI agents does it — the flagship /ship-issue takes a GitHub issue all the way to a reviewed, CI-green pull request.

What are Claude Code subagents and skills?

Subagents are focused AI agents defined in .claude/agents/*.md; skills are reusable workflows defined in .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md and invoked as commands, like /ship-issue. Shipmates ships 11 agents and 9 commands you drop into ~/.claude/ (global) or a repo's .claude/ (project-scoped).

Is this an official Anthropic project?

No. Shipmates is an independent, MIT-licensed community project that builds on Claude Code's public subagent and skill features. “Claude” and “Claude Code” are trademarks of Anthropic.

How is it different from just prompting Claude Code?

A raw prompt drifts; Shipmates is a state machine with gates — an isolated worktree, a mandatory green-CI gate, and a fresh reviewer that never grades its own work — so an autonomous run converges instead of wandering.

Which languages and frameworks does it work with?

Any. The agents are domain-neutral — they enforce the standard in your repo's README / CLAUDE.md, so the same crew works on a game engine, a web app, or a CLI.

Do I have to configure each agent?

No. Install once, then /ship-issue 42. The crew picks up your project's quality bar automatically; a project-level .claude/ definition overrides the global crew when you want to specialise one.