Quickstart

Let your agent set everything up, or go from local dev to deployed yourself in about five minutes.

Let your agent do it

The fastest way to get started is to hand the setup to your coding agent. Paste this prompt into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or whichever agent you use:

Help me get started with Specific by following: https://docs.specific.dev/for-ai/onboarding

Cursor

Codex

Your agent installs the CLI, sets up a project (yours or an example), runs it locally, and walks you through deploying, explaining each step along the way.

Or do it yourself

Prefer to run the commands yourself? In this quickstart you clone a small real-time app, run it locally with one command, and deploy it to production with another.

Install the CLI

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

Clone example

Together with Claude Code, we have created a minimal example to get you familiar with Specific; a click counter with database persistence and realtime sync.

git clone https://github.com/specific-dev/examples.git
cd examples/node-realtime-click-counter
npm install

Start the development server

Now start the dev server:

specific dev

This spins up the web app and any dependencies (Postgres, sync engine, etc.) locally with everything connected automatically. The database schema is also automatically applied.

The terminal output includes the URLs:

The local dashboard (usually http://localhost:3000) visualizes your architecture and lets you manage your data.
The app itself (usually http://localhost:3001). Open it in two browser windows and click: the count syncs in real time.

Deploy to Specific Cloud

specific deploy

After deploying, you will get your very own production server up and running in the cloud. To observe and manage your app, visit the Specific Dashboard.

Continue building with your agent

Now you can run the following command to give your agent of choice (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) the knowledge it needs to build with Specific:

specific init

From now on, your agent should have the context it needs. To verify that this is the case, ask your agent What is Specific? and the answer should be clear.

Now try passing it the following prompt:

Add the ability for users to upload a custom background image to S3. When the background changes, it should be synced in real-time to all connected clients.

Your agent should understand that it can use Specific’s S3-compatible object storage and proceed with implementing it.

Next steps

Coding agents

How agents work with Specific: init, bundled docs, and skills.

How Specific works

The mental model behind specific.hcl.

Services

Define how your code runs and connects.

Postgres

Managed databases with zero-downtime migrations.