Huddle: Decision-led development for teams coding with AI
Huddle is a Claude Code plugin and a decision-led team workflow for AI coding. One person, the AI Manager, hands out
tasks as Issues. Each developer pastes the Issue's «Prompt for Claude Code» into a session. The session works on its own
branch, stops to ask when a decision is not its to make, opens a pull request (a merge request on GitLab) and waits for
the review on its own.
It works with GitHub and GitLab, including self-managed GitLab. Website: https://srprofessional.github.io/Huddle/.
Status: the latest release is 0.7.0; what came after
it is under «Unreleased» in the changelog. The design is in docs/design.md.
Docs: roles · first day · team guide ·
GitLab notes
Our job is no longer typing code. It is making good decisions. The AI writes, tests and asks; the person decides.
PDF guides: the full guide (cycle, roles, labels, rules and the first day) and the first day alone, to send to a new developer. Rebuild them with node docs/pdf/build.mjs (see the file).
Why Huddle
AI coding tools made writing code cheap. They did not make teams faster on their own. When every developer prompts the
AI in their own way, every session understands the project differently. Tasks collide in the same files. Mistakes show up
late, in review or in production. And the one thing the AI cannot bring, knowledge of the business, the users and the
priorities, gets answered in a rush.
Huddle turns that around. The person's time goes into deciding and reviewing. The AI does the typing, the testing and the
asking.
| Without a method | With Huddle |
|---|
| Most of the time goes into writing code by hand, or into writing a new prompt for every task. | The person's time goes into deciding and reviewing. |
| Each person explains the project to the AI in their own way. | Every session reads the same context and the same rules. |
| Tasks collide in the same files. | Each task has its own files, so two people do not collide. |
| Mistakes show up late, in review or in production. | Tests and review catch mistakes before merging. |
Install
Every developer installs Huddle once, on their own machine. Committing a settings snippet to the repo does not do it
for them (see the settings snippet). You need:
- Claude Code.
- Node 22 or newer and
git.
- GitHub: the
gh CLI, logged in with gh auth login.
GitLab: the glab CLI, logged in with glab auth login
(add --hostname gitlab.example.com for a self-managed server).
Install the plugin from its marketplace, once, then type /reload-plugins (if the Huddle skills do not show up, restart Claude Code). If you have the claude command (the CLI), run this in a terminal:
claude plugin marketplace add SrProfessional/Huddle
claude plugin install huddle@huddle
In the Claude Code CLI you can run the same as /plugin commands, then type /reload-plugins (or restart Claude Code):
/plugin marketplace add SrProfessional/Huddle
/plugin install huddle@huddle
If you use only the VS Code extension, it puts no claude command in the terminal: type /plugins instead, add the
marketplace SrProfessional/Huddle in the Marketplaces tab, and install huddle from the Plugins tab with
Install for this project (not «Install for you»). Each person does this once per clone. The same dialog updates it.
The settings snippet is a helper
/huddle-setup also writes this into the project's .claude/settings.json. It enables the plugin for the project and,
in the CLI, registers the marketplace silently, only after the trust dialog of that folder itself. It does not install
anything for a developer who has not done the step above: when a parent folder is already trusted there is no dialog and
the marketplace key is not used, and it is not documented for the VS Code extension. Keep it as a helper, not as the way in.
{
"extraKnownMarketplaces": {
"huddle": {
"source": { "source": "github", "repo": "SrProfessional/Huddle" }
}
},
"enabledPlugins": {
"huddle@huddle": true
}
}
In this guide huddle <command> is the CLI. Inside a session, the skills run it for you. Outside a session, run it from
the plugin's folder, for example node <plugin folder>/bin/huddle <command>.
Huddle has no runtime dependencies, so there is nothing to npm install. Every developer of the team installs the plugin
(and logs in to gh or glab) once. huddle doctor has a «plugin» check that tells you if it runs from an installed plugin. To update it later, see Updating Huddle.
To work on Huddle itself, clone it and load your clone instead of the marketplace copy:
git clone https://github.com/SrProfessional/Huddle.git
claude --plugin-dir ./Huddle
Quickstart for GitHub
About five minutes, in the repo you want to run with Huddle. You are the AI Manager.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
