Installation

Install the Specific CLI and prepare your project.

Specific is a single CLI that runs your local development environment, handles deployments to Specific Cloud, validates your configuration, and serves documentation to your coding agent.

Install the CLI

Specific supports macOS, Linux, and Windows (via WSL).

curl -fsSL https://specific.dev/install.sh | sh

This detects your platform, downloads the latest binary, and adds it to your PATH.

Download the latest binary for your platform:

# macOS (Apple Silicon)
curl -fsSL "https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/$(curl -s https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/latest)/specific-darwin-arm64" -o specific

# macOS (Intel)
curl -fsSL "https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/$(curl -s https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/latest)/specific-darwin-x64" -o specific

# Linux (x86_64)
curl -fsSL "https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/$(curl -s https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/latest)/specific-linux-x64" -o specific

# Linux (ARM64)
curl -fsSL "https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/$(curl -s https://binaries.specific.dev/cli/latest)/specific-linux-arm64" -o specific

Then make it executable and move it somewhere on your PATH:

chmod +x specific
mv specific ~/.local/bin/

Verify the installation:

specific --version

The CLI keeps itself up to date automatically; run specific update to update on demand.

Set up your project

Inside your project folder, run:

specific init

This adds Specific instructions to your coding agent’s configuration (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or Cursor rules, auto-detected) and gitignores Specific’s local files. See Coding agents for details.

Next steps

Quickstart

Clone an example and go from dev to deployed in five minutes.

How Specific works

The mental model behind specific.hcl.