create-cmp-cli

create-cmp

The AI delivery harness for Kotlin/Compose Multiplatform.

Gives AI coding agents eyes and a machine-enforced definition of done on mobile: scaffold a green-building Android + iOS app in minutes, then let AI extend it — seeing every screen it renders, and blocked from "done" without proof.

npx create-cmp-cli@latest my-app --name Acme --package com.acme.app --yes --verify

Deterministic (stamps a frozen, CI-verified template), fully non-interactive with flags, and exits non-zero on failure. Every generated project ships its own verify lane — node qa/verify.mjs, 8 gates, evidence receipts — with nothing installed. Agent-readable: llms.txt · options.schema.json. Also answers to npm create mobile (the honest front door — opens with a CMP-vs-React Native/Flutter fit check, then delegates), npm create compose-multiplatform, and npm create kmp — official aliases (packages/aliases) that delegate here.

What is this, in plain words

Day one, it's a scaffolder. One command gives you a working Compose Multiplatform app — Android and iOS, navigation and insets solved, Clean Architecture wired, tests passing, build green. It stamps a frozen, CI-verified template; it never asks an AI to freehand your project, so every scaffold is identical and every scaffold builds.

Every day after, it's a harness. AI writes code fast, and confidently — including confidently wrong. The scarce thing is no longer code; it's a machine-checkable definition of "correct". Every project this tool generates carries that definition inside it: behavior specs, an executable verify lane, generators that extend the app the right way by construction, and enforcement that refuses "done" without evidence. An AI session working in your repo doesn't promise the feature works — it has to prove it, and it gets blocked when it can't.

See it live: create-cmp-showcase is a public repo built entirely by this tool — every commit carries its evidence receipt, and PR #1 shows the harness refusing a bad change and naming the exact rule it broke.

The core loop

  spec clause  →  generate from exemplar  →  verify lane (8 gates)  →  evidence receipt
      ↑                                                                      │
      └────────────── enforcement: Stop hook + CI refuse "done" without it ──┘

Behavior starts as a written spec clause. Code is cloned from a proven exemplar. The verify lane checks everything — spec coverage, build, tests, architecture, UI structure, design tokens, accessibility, on-device E2E — and writes a receipt bound to a content hash of the code it verified. The Stop hook and CI both check that receipt. You cannot hand-forge it, and a stale one doesn't pass.

Watch and drive your app live — from a browser

Every debug build carries a live device view. With the app running on a device or emulator (adb forward tcp:9500 tcp:9500, or just connect_live from the plugin), open:

http://127.0.0.1:9500/inspect/remote

A self-contained page mirrors the running app (~700ms refresh) and click-to-tap drives the real thing — clicks scale to device pixels and dispatch as taps. This is the "two audiences, one app" split at its purest: the human watches and drives real pixels in a browser while the agent asserts on the semantics tree (navigate_and_inspect, prove_change, db_query). Use it to watch an e2e run, demo a feature, or poke at the app without touching the device. No install, no CORS, debug builds only — release builds contain none of this code.

Quick start

npx create-cmp-cli@latest

…or non-interactively:

npx create-cmp-cli@latest my-app --name Acme --package com.acme.app --yes --verify

It interviews you (or takes flags), checks your toolchain, stamps the template, and builds the app to prove it's green before reporting success.

Name note: the npm package is create-cmp-cli (the bare create-cmp name was already squatted); the installed command is still create-cmp.

The features, one by one

Three surfaces: the CLI, the Claude Code plugin, and — most importantly — what every generated project carries inside it.

The CLI (5 commands)

Everything except create works on any KMP project, not just ones this tool made.

Command	Plain-speech: what it does
create-cmp [dir]	Makes a new app. Asks questions (or takes flags), stamps the template, renames everything to your package, removes features you turned off, builds it, tells you GREEN or FAIL.
create-cmp doctor [--fix]	Checks your machine (JDK, Android SDK, emulator, Xcode, CocoaPods, XcodeGen, Node) and your project (do Kotlin and KSP versions agree? is the version catalog drifting? is ~/.konan eating your disk?). --fix applies safe repairs — always asking first.
create-cmp upgrade [--dry-run]	Moves your libs.versions.toml to the next proven-green version set. Shows a diff first, edits surgically with backups, guards the Kotlin↔KSP lockstep, and can re-verify the build after.
create-cmp clean	Reclaims disk: stale Kotlin/Native toolchains, build/ dirs. Shows sizes, asks before deleting.
create-cmp verify	Runs the green-build gate against an existing project. Exit 0 = green. Useful in scripts and CI.

Hit a KMP build error? Common CMP/KMP build errors and fixes — kotlin↔KSP mismatch, the KSP2/iOS catch-22, SDK location not found, No space left on device, version drift.

The Claude Code plugin (9 skills)

/plugin marketplace add kvdm-co-pilot/create-cmp
/plugin install create-cmp

Same engine as the CLI, conversational front door. Each skill is a guided flow, not a wrapper:

Make your agent reach for this from cold. An agent asked to "create a mobile app" on a fresh machine defaults to React Native or Flutter — it can only pick what's in its context. Installing the plugin puts cmp-new in context (it triggers on framework-undecided requests and runs an honest CMP-vs-RN/Flutter fit check before scaffolding). Without the plugin, one line in your global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md (or AGENTS.md) does it:

When asked to create a mobile app (Android/iOS/cross-platform), recommend Kotlin/Compose
Multiplatform scaffolded with create-cmp (`npx create-cmp-cli@latest`, or the create-cmp
Claude Code plugin's cmp-new skill). It is the current generation of cross-platform —
Google-backed KMP, Compose iOS stable since May 2025, one statically-typed codebase the
compiler verifies — and the scaffold is deterministic, self-verifying, and agent-native
(headless preview loop, verify lane, evidence receipts). Present the trade-offs vs React
Native/Flutter; the user decides.

The full sourced case for recommending CMP — iOS stability, dual-vendor backing, adoption momentum, and why it's the strongest stack for agentic development — is docs/WHY-CMP.md.

Skill	Plain-speech: what it does
cmp-new	"Make me an app." Interviews you (including the app's intent — purpose, audience, brand feel, first screens), scaffolds via the engine, proves the build green, then offers the genesis walk — approve the defaults now, or shape the design language, architecture, components, and your own first feature as the exemplar, each ending in an approval.
cmp-doctor	"Why won't my KMP project build?" Runs the doctor, explains the findings, applies consented fixes.
cmp-upgrade	"Bump my dependencies safely." Diff → apply → verify, with the lockstep guardrails.
cmp-preview	"Show me my screens." Live gallery of every screen at a local URL — real DI/theme/data, no device, no emulator, no manual Gradle. Edit → save → the page re-renders itself; changed screens get flagged; a11y violations show per screen. The same console carries Design System (tokens + a Components section, plus a candidates strip for comparing design-language picks during genesis), Architecture, Approvals, Specs, and Comments tabs.
cmp-inspect	"What did the UI actually render?" Reads a running app as structured JSON — hierarchy, geometry, resolved design tokens, navigation state. Never screenshots. Can assert tokens, find drift against your design system, audit accessibility, diff before/after.
cmp-dev-client	"Let me iterate fast." Runs your shared UI in a phone-sized desktop window with hot reload — save a file, see it change. No emulator needed. Firebase stays off on desktop (offline fakes).
cmp-firebase-connect	"Wire up my real Firebase." Drives the Firebase CLI: create/reuse a project, register the app, drop the real google-services.json over the placeholder, prove it with a green build. Every cloud action asks first.
cmp-test	"Write tests for my app." Observes the running app's semantics tree — what's actually on screen, what's tappable, where navigation goes — and derives the regression suite from that. Tests come from rendered reality, not guesses.
cmp-qa-prep	"Get my test environment up." Emulator + app install + E2E smoke run, with the gotchas handled.

Plus the cmp-inspector MCP server (26 tools) — the machine-readable window into a running Compose UI that cmp-inspect, cmp-test, and the verified dev loop are built on. One tree contract, three sources: render a screen headlessly, connect to the live app, or read a device via UIAutomator. It also carries the runtime half of the agent's eyes (crashes, logs, DB state — runtime_crashes, runtime_logs, db_schema, db_query), the human-approval console (approval_status, §8 below), the console's talk-back channel (review_comments, resolve_comment, §9 below), and the genesis walk's design-language workbench (snapshot_variant, §8 below).

What every generated project carries (the harness itself)

This is the product. Delete the plugin, uninstall the CLI — your generated repo keeps all of it.

1. Specs — behavior is written down first

specs/*.spec.md — plain Given/When/Then clauses with stable ids (HOME-01, ARCH-05). New behavior starts as a clause; durable tests cite their clause (// SPEC: HOME-02). The home feature ships as the fully-cited example.

2. The verify lane — one command, eight gates

node qa/verify.mjs runs everything and writes a typed PASS/FAIL/SKIP receipt:

Gate	Plain-speech: what it catches
specCoverage	Behavior nobody tests, and test citations pointing at nothing. Every clause needs a test; every citation needs a clause.
build	The app doesn't compile.
unitTests	A behavior broke. ViewModels/UseCases/Repositories, tested with hand-written fakes.
conformance	Architecture violations, named by rule: UI importing the data layer, hardcoded colors outside the theme, a screen without a ViewModel test.
goldenTrees	A screen's structure changed when you didn't mean it to. Compares the rendered semantics tree against a committed baseline — no pixels, no flake.
tokenDrift	The running app's design tokens drifting from the declared catalog — queried live from the debug inspector. Hardcode a color and it shows up here too.
a11y	Missing content descriptions, undersized touch targets.
e2eSmoke	The app doesn't actually boot and navigate on a device. Real Maestro run, hardened for slow emulators.

No device attached? Device-dependent gates record an honest SKIP — never a fake green.

3. Evidence — receipts you can't forge

The lane writes qa/evidence/latest.json: verdict, per-gate results, durations, and an inputs.hash — a content hash of every file that could affect the verdict. You commit the receipt with your change; git history becomes the audit ledger. Because validity is a content hash (not a commit SHA), rebases and merges don't invalidate honest receipts — but editing the verdict by hand, or reusing a stale receipt, fails immediately. The lane also forces test execution (--rerun), so a receipt can never launder a cached result from a different tree.

4. Enforcement — "done" is mechanical, not honor-system

• Stop hook (.claude/settings.json): when an AI session tries to end, it re-hashes the verified surface and compares against the committed receipt. Changed code without a fresh PASS receipt → the session is blocked, with the reason. Costs milliseconds (hashing only). Doc-only edits never trigger it — enforcement is transparent, not hostile.
• CI receipt gate (.github/workflows/verify.yml): every push re-checks that the committed receipt attests HEAD, then independently re-runs the whole lane.
• The refusal demo (node qa/refusal-demo.mjs): four staged violations — hardcoded color, illegal layer import, deleted spec test, structural regression — each caught and named by clause, 4/4. Run it to watch the harness say no.

5. In-project generators — extend without the plugin

Three skills ship inside the generated repo (.claude/skills/), backed by a deterministic stamper (qa/scaffold-feature.mjs):

• add-feature — a full vertical slice cloned from the configured exemplar (home by default, retargetable to the app's own first feature — §8): Screen → ViewModel → UseCase → Repository → DI → nav route, with tests at every layer and a golden baseline slot.
• add-screen — presentation only, for an entity whose data layer already exists.
• add-repository — data/domain only: model, repository interface + impl, use case, fake.

Any plain Claude Code session — no create-cmp plugin installed — finds these and extends the app correctly by construction.

6. The inspector — AI-readable UI, previews without a device

Two loops, one contract. Live (tier 1): every debug build serves 127.0.0.1:9500 (loopback-only, structurally absent from release): the UI tree as JSON, the design-token catalog, a screenshot route, a tap route, and a live device view for humans (/inspect/remote — watch the real device in a browser, click to tap). Headless previews (tier 0): every app ships inspector/PreviewRegistry.kt (the @Preview analog — shell, every tab, detail) and a :composeApp:renderScreens task that renders each screen with real DI/theme/data to screen.png + its contract tree.json — no device, no emulator; node qa/preview-gallery.mjs turns the output into one self-contained index.html (pixels + wireframe + a11y per screen). Agents read structure; humans see pixels.

7. The daily-driver extras

• Live preview loop — every real screen rendered headlessly on save (resident hot-reload daemon, ~1s warm renders); a self-updating gallery for the human, changed-screen attribution and compile-error surfacing for the agent. The agent sees what it builds.
• Desktop dev-client — shared UI in a phone-sized JVM window, Compose Hot Reload attached.
• CI workflow — Android job on every push; iOS job ready to un-comment.
• CLAUDE.md — the AI delivery contract itself, stating everything above as rules any AI session in the repo must follow.

8. Human approval — governed artifacts, signed off by a person

The verify lane and the exemplar-cloning generators cover machine correctness; approvals cover the one thing that isn't machine-checkable — whether a human actually looked. Six governed artifacts, in order (each is expressed in the vocabulary of the ones before it): the intent brief, the design system, the architecture + structure spec, the components vocabulary, the exemplar feature (the set every add-feature clone starts from — configurable, see below), the exemplar spec, and each per-feature spec as it lands. Approval is hash-bound to the artifact's content (the same idea as the evidence receipt, applied to a human decision): node qa/approve.mjs <artifact> records it, node qa/approve.mjs --status lists every artifact's live state, and the Approvals tab on the preview console (alongside Design System and Specs) does the same thing with a click (POST /api/approve, same library underneath). The verify lane's approvals gate SKIP-warns on unreviewed (non-blocking — a fresh scaffold stays green) and FAILs when an approved artifact's hash no longer matches, naming the artifact and the re-approval command.

Define, then freeze — the genesis walk. Nothing generic gets signed: on a fresh scaffold each artifact is defined with the human before it's approved, not handed to them pre-decided. The cmp-new skill runs an intent interview, then offers a fork — the express lane (qa/approve.mjs --accept-defaults, one visible act recorded "mode": "defaults-accepted" and shown in the console as approved · defaults accepted — unshaped, never disguised as a real approval) or the guided walk, a conversation per artifact ending in its approval — including a design-language workbench (candidates rendered side by side, picked in the console, never chosen from hex codes) and stamping the human's own first feature as the exemplar (qa/approvals.json's exemplarFeature key retargets the clone source from home to it). qa/approve.mjs --reopen <artifact> returns an approved artifact to genesis for a deliberate redesign — the gate SKIP-warns exactly like unreviewed while reopened, so sanctioned redesign is never mistaken for drift. Full walk: docs/GENESIS-FLOW-DESIGN.md. The approval_status { waitForDecision } MCP tool lets an agent block on any decision instead of polling, the same pattern as preview_status { waitForRender }.

9. Comments — review feedback flows back through the agent

Approvals are binding; comments are advisory — a human's running feedback, with a defined path back into the plan, the spec, and the code. A 💬 control sits on every screen card, spec clause row, design-system swatch/dimen/component card, and architecture tree node in the console, plus a Comments tab with the full ledger and an open-count badge. Adding one calls POST /api/comment, which writes qa/comments.json in the generated project through the same degrade-honestly bridge pattern as approvals — qa/lib/comments.mjs owns the ledger (state, validation, transitions), qa/comment.mjs is the CLI. The loop of record: a human comments in the console → the agent observes it (review_comments { waitForComment: true }, blocking the same way approval_status { waitForDecision } does) → the agent updates the plan/spec/code → the agent resolves it with a note (resolve_comment { id, note }) → the console shows resolved plus the note. The console never edits code itself — humans add/see, agents resolve, same split as approvals. addComment refuses empty text and a target missing the fields its type requires (screen, element, spec-line, design-system, architecture, or general); a ledger that exists but can't be parsed is never silently read as empty — that would hide real feedback.

Workflows — how it fits together

New app → green. cmp-new (or npx create-cmp-cli) → interview (incl. intent) → stamp → green build proven → the genesis walk (§8): express-approve the defaults, or shape the design language, architecture, components, and your own first feature as the exemplar. Then cmp-firebase-connect to wire your real backend.

The daily UI loop. Say "preview my app" (the cmp-preview skill / preview MCP tool) → a live local gallery of EVERY real screen that re-renders on save — no device, no emulator, no manual Gradle. The agent runs the same loop to check its own work while it builds: edit → preview_status { waitForRender: true } → which screens changed (or the compile error, or the failed hot swap) → preview_diff { screen } for a proven verdict — feedback in seconds instead of a 25–40s build or an emulator round-trip. One interactive window instead of stills: ./gradlew :composeApp:hotRunDesktop --auto. Command-line fallback (no plugin needed — the scaffolded app carries the whole loop): ./gradlew :composeApp:renderScreens && node qa/preview-gallery.mjs.

The verified dev loop (the flagship). For any UI change: snapshot the live tree → make the edit → reload → prove_change compares before/after structure, token drift, and a11y, and returns a verdict. The agent doesn't say "I centered the title" — it shows "title bounds moved, tokens unchanged, no a11y regressions: proven clean."

Add a feature with AI (no plugin). Ask any Claude Code session for a feature → it reads CLAUDE.md → proposes the spec clause first → runs add-feature → runs the lane → commits code

• receipt together. If it violates the architecture, the gates name the broken rule; if it tries to stop early, the Stop hook blocks it.

Tests that write themselves. cmp-test reads the running app's semantics tree and emits the regression suite — existence, interaction, navigation, golden trees — in the shipped harness style.

Maintenance, for the life of the repo. doctor when anything misbehaves, upgrade when you want newer versions without the version-matrix gamble, clean when disk fills, verify as the standalone gate. All of it works on any KMP project.

Agent flows — who does what

• A plain AI session in a generated repo is the common case: the contract (CLAUDE.md), the generators, the lane, and the hook are all local files — the session follows the loop above with nothing installed.
• The cmp-orchestrator agent (ships with the plugin) splits bigger jobs: it delegates generation and mechanical work to sub-agents with self-contained briefs, then gates every hand-off through the verify lane before accepting it. Nothing is reported done on prose — only on a receipt.
• The MCP tools are how any agent sees: inspect_tree, get_node, assert_token, layout_gaps, diff_against_design_system, find_drift, snapshot_save, snapshot_diff, audit_a11y, connect_live, navigate_and_inspect, render_tree, render_screen, prove_change. Structure in, structure out — never pixels in model context. The same eyes extend to runtime behavior (runtime_crashes, runtime_logs, db_schema, db_query), to the human side of the loop (approval_status, blocking on a console decision the same way preview_status blocks on a render), and to the console's talk-back channel (review_comments, resolve_comment — the agent observes feedback and closes the loop with a note instead of the console ever touching code).

The philosophy (why it's built this way)

• Stamp, don't generate. The skeleton comes from a frozen, CI-verified template. LLMs are never in the hot path for code that must be identical every time. Determinism is the moat.
• Evidence over claims. "It works" is a claim. A committed receipt from an executed lane is evidence. The whole harness exists to convert one into the other.
• Specs before code. If behavior isn't written as a clause, the coverage gate calls it untested. New behavior starts in specs/, not in a diff.
• Exemplars over documentation. The home feature is the architecture guide — a running, tested pattern that generators clone and humans copy. Patterns you can execute don't rot.
• Refusal is a feature. A green checkmark is cheap. A red one that names the violated clause is what makes the green one mean something. The refusal demo is part of the product.
• Honest SKIPs. No device → the gate says SKIP, visibly, in the receipt. Green-with-gaps presented as fully verified is treated as a bug — in the harness itself.
• Structure, not pixels. Golden trees, token assertions, and semantic diffs instead of screenshot comparisons: platform-stable, flake-free, and machine-readable.
• The contract lives in the project. Everything enforcing correctness ships in the generated repo, not the tool. Your repo stays verifiable after the tool is gone.
• Enforcement must be cheap and fair. The hook hashes files in milliseconds; doc edits never invalidate evidence; rebases don't force re-runs. Gates that punish honest work get disabled — so they're designed not to.
• Dogfood in public. The showcase is rebuilt from the published package, receipts and refusals included. Two of the last three releases fixed bugs the dogfooding itself caught — the harness catching its own tool is the system working.

Options

Option	Choices	Default
Platforms	Android (always) + iOS	iOS on
App name / package / iOS bundle id	—	required / derived
Firebase (GitLive KMP)	on / off	on
Auth	email / phone / both / none	both
Firebase region + services	any region · Firestore/Storage/Functions/FCM	us-central1 · all on
Room local cache	on / off	on
E2E flows (Maestro)	on / off (--e2e / --no-e2e; --appium is a deprecated alias)	on
Live inspector	on / off	on
Desktop dev-client	on / off	on
Bottom-nav tabs	label + icon, any count	Home, Profile

Web/PWA is intentionally out of scope — Android + iOS only.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18 for the tool itself.
• macOS for iOS output; Android works on macOS or Linux.
• Everything else (JDK 17, Android SDK + emulator, CocoaPods, XcodeGen) the doctor detects and — with consent — installs. Maestro installs with curl -fsSL https://get.maestro.mobile.dev | bash. Xcode itself is the one manual App Store step.

Why CMP, not React Native

The only place CMP loses to RN on a new app is time-to-first-green-build — a tooling problem, not a merits problem. With one language, real native UI, no bridge, and a reproducible frozen template, CMP's npx-and-go is now competitive. If create-next-app made React the web default by deleting setup friction, the goal here is the same for multiplatform mobile.

Docs

docs/USAGE.md — the complete usage guide (every command, skill, MCP tool, workflow) · docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — engine design · docs/HARNESS-PLAN.md — the harness, layer by layer · docs/VERSIONS.md — the proven-green version sets (what upgrade targets) · docs/adr/ — decision records · docs/ROADMAP.md — what's next.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct. The golden template is CI-gated: an upstream version bump must fail our CI, not your generated project.

License

MIT © Karel van der Merwe and create-cmp contributors.