# Clarification: What is the purpose of quickstart.md in Spec Kit and how should it be used?

[pks1989]

What is the purpose of quickstart.md in Spec Kit and how should it be used?

Hey 👋

While working with Spec Kit, I noticed that a quickstart.md file is often generated automatically and referenced in several prompt files, including:

• speckit.plan.prompt.md
• speckit.tasks.prompt.md
• speckit.implement.prompt.md
• speckit.constitution.prompt.md

However, its exact role isn’t clearly described in the official documentation.
It seems to act as a context or onboarding guide, but the intended purpose remains unclear.

A few questions:

• Is quickstart.md considered a formal part of the Spec Kit specification
  (alongside constitution.md, plan.md, tasks.md, etc.),
  or is it just an auxiliary context file for agents?
• What kind of content is expected inside — feature overviews, integration scenarios, setup instructions?
• Should this file be versioned and maintained by the team,
  or is it meant to be a temporary artifact used only for LLM agent context?

Would appreciate an official clarification
or an example of a properly structured quickstart.md.

Thanks in advance

[Danindu05]

Great question — the quickstart.md file in Spec Kit serves as a lightweight onboarding and context guide rather than a formal part of the Spec Kit specification.

Its main purpose is to give agents or developers a concise overview of how to use a given spec — outlining the intent, key components, and workflow sequence (e.g., how plan.prompt.md, tasks.prompt.md, and others connect). Think of it as a “read-me” for the spec itself, optimized for LLM agent context loading rather than long-term documentation.

A few clarifications:

quickstart.md is not part of the formal specification like constitution.md or plan.md.

It can be versioned with the spec if you want reproducible runs, but by default, it’s auto-generated or manually curated as a transient onboarding file.

Typical content includes:

A high-level summary of the spec’s purpose and use cases

Example invocation or usage flow

Key configuration or dependencies

Any quick setup instructions for new users or automated agents

In short, treat it as an optional but recommended entry point to the spec — useful for both humans and LLM-based tools to get oriented quickly.