Release Spec4 v1.5.0 — a new interface, and a pipeline that explains itself · robertcrowe/Spec4

Interface

Project page. One table, seven rows in pipeline order: agent, what it produces, the model that last ran it, tokens this round, and the one action available now — Start, Continue, Modify, Needs Update, Not Ready or Required. Below it, the round's estimated cost and a tree of every artifact file, each opening in the Artifacts view.
Artifacts view. Every artifact of the active round, readable in the app.
Pipeline row. The seven agents in order at the top of every agent screen, Designer included; the active one is marked, the others are a click away.
Transcript. Agent turns unfilled, user turns lightly filled, one-word speaker labels. Under the composer: a model chip that opens the per-agent picker, and a one-line status of what the model is doing.
Per-agent model gate. At agent entry, one line — Model for Phaser: claude-sonnet-5 · default — and two or three answers. Overrides carry across projects and are offered back rather than re-entered.
Orientation, closed by default. The project page opens with one sentence and a "How Spec4 works" disclosure that explains the table and the button vocabulary. Designer, which has no chat to introduce itself in, opens the same way with "How to use Designer"; its guide names steps by the step row's own labels.

Deployer shows the deployment plan, not the README it optionally authors. The README is still written to the project root; returning to a finished Deployer shows the plan from disk, with the README offer still on screen if you haven't answered it.
Returning to Deployer after declining the README no longer spends a model call on a recap.
Continuing into Designer from Brainstormer or Agentifier clears a stale failed-draw snapshot instead of resurrecting its error panel.

The codebase went through a nine-phase cleanup: ruff under promoted rules, strict mypy, 4,300+ tests at 93.5% coverage, and a regression floor of 456 protected tests that can't be edited without a petition. The gate runs in pre-commit and pre-push hooks. Standing rules are in AGENTS.md; setup is in CONTRIBUTING.md.
The repo carries three rounds of Spec4 planning its own changes under .spec4/ — the UI rework, the Artifacts view and the cleanup — with real phase files and real usage.json totals.

README rewritten: artifact first, the pipeline as a table, why rounds aren't waterfall, what "built for production" means mechanically, what Spec4 isn't and where your data goes, real costs, and a screenshot of the project page on Spec4's own repository.

uv tool upgrade spec4

Artifacts and saved credentials are untouched.