Director Mode Lite

Use Claude Code like a Director, not a Programmer

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"Don't write code. Direct Claude to write code for you."

Start Here

After installing, run these 3 commands:

/getting-started          # Guided 5-minute onboarding
/project-init             # Auto-detect project and configure
/workflow                 # Start your first feature

New to Director Mode? Read What is Director Mode? below, or jump to Quick Start.

Director Mode Lite is fully compatible with the latest Claude Code release (Claude 5 era), including support for:

• Claude 5 family model selection in agent/skill frontmatter (fable, opus, sonnet, haiku aliases)
• Agent Teams (experimental multi-agent collaboration)
• 1M context window models (opus[1m], sonnet[1m])
• All 30 hook event types including SessionStart, PreCompact, and PostCompact
• Multi-account delegation via CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR profiles (/handoff-claude)

Tested with Claude Code CLI v2.1.201 as of July 2026. Works with Claude Fable 5, Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5, and Haiku 4.5.

What is Director Mode?

Director Mode is a paradigm shift in AI-assisted development. Instead of writing code line by line, you direct Claude to execute your vision autonomously.

  Traditional Coding                    Director Mode
  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━                    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  You: Write code                       You: Define the vision
  AI:  Follow orders                    AI:  Execute autonomously
       ↓                                     ↓
  Micromanagement                       Strategic oversight
  One task at a time                    Parallel agent execution
  Manual intervention                   Continuous automation

Core Principles

Key Feature: TDD-Driven Auto-Loop

touch .auto-loop/stop

/auto-loop "Create a calculator

Acceptance Criteria:
- [ ] add(a, b) function
- [ ] subtract(a, b) function
- [ ] Unit tests"

[Iteration 1] RED    → Write test...
[Iteration 2] GREEN  → Implement...
[Iteration 3] REFACTOR → Clean...
[Iteration 4] GREEN  → subtract()...
[Iteration 5] All criteria complete!

NEW: Self-Evolving Loop

/evolving-loop "Build REST API

Acceptance Criteria:
- [ ] GET /users endpoint
- [ ] POST /users endpoint
- [ ] Input validation
- [ ] Error handling
"

# The loop:
# 1. Analyzes requirements deeply
# 2. Generates custom executor skill
# 3. Executes with TDD
# 4. Validates results
# 5. If fails: learns & evolves skills
# 6. Repeats until all criteria pass
# 7. Ships the final result

/evolving-status
/evolving-status --history
/evolving-status --evolution

See docs/SELF-EVOLVING-LOOP.md for complete documentation.

Quick Start

Option A: Plugin Install (Recommended)

# 1. Install plugin via Claude Code marketplace
claude plugin install director-mode-lite

# 2. Navigate to your project directory
cd your-project

# 3. Run installation script from cached plugin
~/.claude/plugins/cache/director-mode-lite/director-mode-lite/1.8.0/install.sh .

# 4. Verify installation
~/.claude/plugins/cache/director-mode-lite/director-mode-lite/1.8.0/scripts/verify-install.sh .

# Update plugin to latest version
claude plugin marketplace update director-mode-lite
claude plugin uninstall director-mode-lite
claude plugin install director-mode-lite

# Check installed plugins
cat ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json | jq '.'

# View plugin cache
ls -la ~/.claude/plugins/cache/director-mode-lite/director-mode-lite/1.8.0/

Option B: Clone and Install

git clone https://github.com/claude-world/director-mode-lite.git
cd director-mode-lite
./install.sh /path/to/your/project

Option C: Try Demo First

git clone https://github.com/claude-world/director-mode-lite.git
cd director-mode-lite
./demo.sh ~/director-mode-demo

Verify Installation

Run the verifier against the project where you installed Director Mode Lite:

# Plugin install
~/.claude/plugins/cache/director-mode-lite/director-mode-lite/1.8.0/scripts/verify-install.sh .

# Clone install
./scripts/verify-install.sh /path/to/your/project

The script checks:

• CLAUDE.md plus core .claude/ files and directories
• Required CLAUDE.md sections from the template
• .claude/skills/ and .claude/agents/ are populated

It prints colored PASS and FAIL lines, exits 0 when all checks pass, and exits 1 if any check fails.

• Automatic Backup - Backups existing .claude/ to .claude-backup-TIMESTAMP/
• Portable Path Hooks - All hooks use $CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR for portability (no more "file not found" errors)
• Smart Merge - Preserves existing settings, only adds new hooks
• Skip Existing - Won't overwrite already-installed commands/agents/skills
• Clean Uninstall - ./uninstall.sh removes all installed files
• Automated Tests - ./tests/run-tests.sh validates installation

What's Included

The 5-Step Workflow

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                 │
│    Step 1                Step 2                Step 3           │
│  ┌─────────┐           ┌─────────┐           ┌─────────┐        │
│  │ FOCUS   │    ──►    │ PREVENT │    ──►    │  TEST   │        │
│  │ PROBLEM │           │ OVERDEV │           │  FIRST  │        │
│  └─────────┘           └─────────┘           └─────────┘        │
│       │                     │                     │             │
│  Understand             Only build            Red-Green-        │
│  before coding          what's needed         Refactor          │
│                                                                 │
│                    Step 4                Step 5                 │
│                  ┌─────────┐           ┌─────────┐              │
│           ──►    │DOCUMENT │    ──►    │ COMMIT  │              │
│                  └─────────┘           └─────────┘              │
│                       │                     │                   │
│                  Auto-generated         Conventional            │
│                  documentation          Commits                 │
│                                                                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Parallel Agent Execution

One of Director Mode's key advantages is parallel processing:

Agent 1 ─────►
              Agent 2 ─────►
                            Agent 3 ─────►
                                          Agent 4 ─────►

Total time: 4 × single_agent_time

Agent 1 ─────┐
Agent 2 ─────┼────► Results
Agent 3 ─────┤
Agent 4 ─────┘

Total time: max(single_agent_time)

Example: Problem Analysis

# Old way: Sequential manual searches
grep -r "authentication" src/
grep -r "login" src/
cat src/auth/index.ts
# ... slow, tedious

# Director Mode: One command, 5 parallel agents
/focus-problem "understand the authentication flow"

Agents

Expert Agents (NEW)

Director Mode Lite includes 5 Expert Agents that deeply understand Claude Code's official features:

Why? Anthropic provides documentation, but no specialized helpers. These experts know the official docs and help you implement correctly.

Validators & Generators (NEW)

Pair with Expert Agents for validate-then-fix or template-then-customize workflows:

/claude-md-check              # Check CLAUDE.md structure
/mcp-check                    # Check MCP settings.json
/agent-check [file.md]        # Check agent file format
/skill-check [file.md]        # Check skill file format
/hooks-check                  # Check hooks config + scripts

## Validation Report

### Status: ✅ PASS / ⚠️ WARNINGS / ❌ FAIL

| Check | Status | Notes |
|-------|--------|-------|
| ...   | ✅/❌  | ...   |

### Issues Found
1. [Issue and recommendation]

### Auto-Fix Available
- Run command X to fix...

/claude-md-template           # Generate CLAUDE.md
/agent-template [name] [purpose]  # Generate agent
/skill-template [name] [purpose]  # Generate skill
/hook-template [type] [purpose]   # Generate hook

/agent-template security-scanner "scan for vulnerabilities"

# Creates: .claude/agents/security-scanner.md
# with proper frontmatter, activation triggers,
# output format, and guidelines

CLAUDE.md Configuration

The CLAUDE.md file configures Claude's behavior in your project:

# Project: My App
Tech: TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL

# Policies
- Always write tests first
- Use conventional commits
- Document public APIs

# Workflow
- Parallel agents: enabled
- Auto-commit: disabled
- Review before merge: required

See docs/CLAUDE-TEMPLATE.md for a complete template.

Comparison

Examples

Learn by doing with hands-on tutorials:

See examples/ for full tutorials.

Community

Documentation

Related Projects

Other open-source tools from the Claude World community:

These tools work great alongside Director Mode Lite. Use cf-browser for web research agents and trend-pulse for staying on top of developer trends.

Author

Lucas Wang (@lukashanren1)

• GitHub: @gn00295120
• Website: claude-world.com

License

MIT License - Free for personal and commercial use.

See LICENSE for details.

About Director Mode Lite

This is a free, open-source toolkit (v1.8.0) from the Claude World community, compatible with the latest Claude Code (Claude 5 era).

Website | Discord | Twitter

_{Made with direction by Claude World Taiwan}