We are glad to initially announce the public availability of Agentic Software Engineering (ASE, https://ase.tools), the Apache-2.0-licensed Open Source toolkit of Dr. Ralf S. Engelschall, for fusing the concept of Agentic AI Coding and traditional Software Engineering. ASE ships as a plugin for the software development tool Anthropic Claude Code CLI. It comprises agent hooks, parametrizable agent skills, an underlying Model-Context-Protocol (MCP) service, and a companion Command-Line Interface (CLI).

ASE incorporates reasonable methodology and automation aspects to support the daily, recurring tasks of a Software Developer and Software Architect. The comprehensive functionality spans from brainstorming ideas, searching the Web, asking foreign LLMs, finding quorum answers, discovering components, through evaluating alternatives, challenging and fortifying statements, analyzing root-causes, managing tasks, grilling task plans, all the way to analyzing, fixing, refactoring, and crafting code, reviewing changesets, generating changelog entries, and many more.

Wanna see some ASE skill prompts to get a feel for it?

# Craft new feature from scratch > /ase-code-craft --quick hello: new "ase hello" CLI command which prints "Hello World" to the terminal"

# Hunt for logic, performance, and security flaws > /ase-code-analyze --performance --severity=HIGH @tool/src/*/.ts

# Find third-party components for technology stack > /ase-arch-discover --limit=20 command line option and argument parsing library

# Align target artifacts with their source > /ase-sync-reconcile --source=SPEC,ARCH --target=CODE,DOCS

# Narrate staged changes > /ase-meta-diff --coherence --risk --blast

# Fix spelling, punctuation, and grammar > /ase-docs-proofread --auto @docs/SPEC-

.md

# Challenge thesis as devil's advocate > /ase-meta-diaboli --count=5 Yargs would be better than Commander.js for the ASE CLI

# Restructure code without changing behavior > /ase-code-refactor move the MCP code into its own separated class

# Extract ranked key points > /ase-docs-distill --top=5 @docs/architecture.md

# Compare alternatives via weighted decision matrix > /ase-arch-evaluate Commander.js vs Yargs vs. Optique, focus on TypeScript support, features and popularity

# Build strongest case for thesis > /ase-meta-steelman --count=10 ASE is a useful Claude Code plugin

# Trace root cause with Five-Whys method > /ase-meta-why --width=2 --depth=6 is the Decibel (dB) unit a logarithmic one?

# Diverge, cluster, and shortlist ideas > /ase-meta-brainstorm --max-clarify=0 --min-ideas=20 clever and useful AI skills for software engineering

# Diagnose and resolve a problem > /ase-code-resolve unexpected service crash when agent tool is upgraded

# Search the Web for a consolidated answer > /ase-meta-search Who authored the ASE project?

Find out more about ASE on: https://ase.tools