openspec-explore

To clarify requirements and map your codebase, use a guided exploration partner to reason about potential approaches, surface questions, and visualize relationships before writing production code. This structures early-stage design thinking.

Yes, you can generate design artifacts like proposals, designs, and specs to capture your thinking without writing production code. This documents requirements and exploration before implementation begins.

The best way to visualize complex relationships during codebase exploration is using ASCII diagrams generated by a thinking partner. This surfaces questions and maps structural connections when investigating complex changes.

This exploration mode handles only design thinking and requirements clarification, not implementation tasks. It explicitly reminds users to exit explore mode and create a change proposal for any actual implementation work.

You need OpenSpec guardrails for early-stage design exploration when you want to structure requirements clarification and map codebase context systematically. This ensures exploration stays aligned with specifications before artifact creation.