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The essential piece of Specific is the CLI tool. It manages your local development environment and handles deployments to Specific Cloud. The CLI:
  • Provides documentation for your coding agent.
  • Runs your local development environment and handles deployments with the dependencies defined by your agent (services, databases, storage, etc.).
  • Handles secrets securely.
  • Validates the definition written by your agent to catch configuration errors before they cause problems.
  • Sets up an admin interface to visualize your architecture and manage your data.

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Installation

To install the specific CLI, run: 
npm i -g specific-alpha
Then inside your project folder, run: 
specific init
Depending on your setup, this adds a minimal CLAUDE.md (for Claude Code), AGENTS.md, or Cursor rules to your project directory. Most of the context lives in the Specific docs, which your agent can fetch as needed.

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Usage

The interface for Specific is very simple, talk to your coding agent and describe what you want to build (both frontend and backend). Your coding agent will automatically have context on how to define deployments and infrastructure by writing a specific.hcl file, which can look something like this:
specific.hcl
build "app" {
  base    = "node"
  command = "npm install"
}

service "web" {
  build = build.app
  command = "npm start"
  expose {}

  env = {
    PORT         = port
    DATABASE_URL = postgres.main.url
  }
  
  dev {
    command = "npm run dev"
  }

  pre_deploy {
    command = "npm run db:migrate"
  }
}

postgres "main" {}
Once it has built what you need, you can start a local dev server using: 
specific dev
This will automatically spin up any databases and run dev servers for your code. The output will include URLs to test your app as well as logs. Running commands To run a one-off command in the context of a service (e.g., database migrations), use specific exec: 
specific exec web -- npm run db:migrate
This runs the command with the service’s environment variables and dependencies available. Admin UI The dev server will also output a URL to an admin UI that can visualize your architecture and exposes an interface to handle your data.

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Deployment

Once you are happy with your app and you have tested it in your local environment, simply run the following to deploy it to a scalable production environment: 
specific deploy