Profiles

Choose which workflows are installed, and whether they install as skills, commands, or both.

A profile is your preference for which OpenSpec workflows (the skills and commands in your AI tool) are installed across your machine. The default profile is core; include or exclude workflows and your selection is saved as the custom profile.

The core set

The core profile installs six workflows, covering the whole loop from idea to archive:

Workflow	What it's for
`explore`	Think through an idea before it becomes a change proposal
`propose`	Create a change proposal and generate all its planning artifacts in one step
`apply`	Implement a change proposal's tasks
`update`	Revise a change proposal's existing planning artifacts
`sync`	Merge a change proposal's spec updates into `specs/` without archiving it
`archive`	Move a finished change proposal to the archive

Each links to its full contract: arguments, what it creates, and what it responds with.

Expanding the set: optional workflows

Six more workflows are available beyond the core set. Three of them (new, continue, ff) create a change proposal artifact by artifact, instead of all at once like propose.

Workflow	What it's for
`new`	Start a change proposal as an empty scaffold
`continue`	Create the next planning artifact in a change proposal, one at a time
`ff`	Create a change proposal and every planning artifact implementation needs, in one pass
`verify`	Check that the implementation matches the change proposal's artifacts
`bulk-archive`	Archive several change proposals at once
`onboard`	Learn the workflow by doing one real change proposal end to end

To change the set, run the interactive picker:

openspec config profile

The picker asks what to configure (delivery, workflows, or both), then lists all twelve workflows as checkboxes, with the installed ones checked. Any selection that isn't exactly the core six is saved as the custom profile, so you can also uncheck core workflows you don't use.

Delivery: skills, commands, or both

Delivery is a profile setting that lets you choose to have only skills or only commands installed. The default is both. Set up your project explains the two forms and why both exist. The field's exact contract is in CLI settings (config.json).

Two ways to change it:

Interactively: run openspec config profile and choose "Delivery only". Here's switching to skills only:

Current profile settings
  Delivery: both

? What do you want to configure? Delivery only
? Delivery mode (how workflows are installed): Skills only

Config changes:
  delivery: both -> skills
? Apply changes to this project now? (Y/n) y

Directly: one command, no prompts:

openspec config set delivery skills   # or: both, commands

Delivery never changes the profile name: core and custom describe the workflow set only, and switching back to core keeps your delivery setting.

Switching profiles

Switching is two steps: change the profile on your machine, then update each project to apply it.

Change the profile:

openspec config profile        # interactive
openspec config profile core   # reset to the core six (keeps delivery)

Run the update in each project you work in:
```
openspec update
```

When your current directory is an existing OpenSpec project, the interactive flow offers to run step 2 there for you.

The core set

Expanding the set: optional workflows

Delivery: skills, commands, or both

Switching profiles

On this page