I've been using LLMs for long discovery and research chats (papers, repos, best practices), then distilling that into phased markdown (build plan + tests), then handing those phases to Codex/Claude to implement and test phase by phase.

The annoying part was always the distillation and keeping docs and architecture current, so I built Unpack: a lightweight GitHub template plus docs structure and a few commands that turns conversations into phases/specs and keeps project docs up to date as the agent builds. It can also generate Mintlify-friendly end-user docs.

There are other spec-driven workflows and tools out there. I wanted something conversation-first and repo-native: plain markdown phases, minimal ceremony, easy to adapt per stack.

Example generated with Unpack (tiny pokedex plus random monsters):

Demo: https://apresmoi.github.io/pokesvg-codex/

Phases index: https://github.com/apresmoi/pokesvg-codex/blob/main/.unpack/...

I’d love feedback on what the “minimum good” phase/spec format should be, and what would make this actually usable in your workflow.

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Repo: https://github.com/apresmoi/unpack