B.O.S.S.

Build Out Solid Stuff

A startup incubator that runs inside Claude Code.

Everyone can build now. Almost no one can tell a real business from a convincing demo. BOSS puts the structure of a startup around your code — how to decide what to build, when to ship, and when the discipline should get out of your way — and it speaks up when you're drifting. Free, MIT, zero dependencies, runs entirely on your machine.

npx oyeboss new my-app

Needs Node 18+ and Claude Code. The CLI sets the project up; the skills run inside Claude.

what that actually prints 
boss new my-app
  ✦ Created my-app — Quickstart mode (L0-quickstart, BOSS 0.198.0)
    agents: product-lead, coder, mentor-founder
    skills: welcome, boss, import, triage, prototype, canvas, evidence, interview … +8 more (`boss map`)
 
  Next (these run in your terminal)
    cd my-app
    claude              # open Claude Code (terminal or editor panel)
    then, inside Claude:
    > /boss <your idea>     # a sentence, a doc, a deck, or a link
▸the problem

Building got cheap. Being wrong didn't.

AI made a polished prototype nearly free, which created a new trap: confusing a pseudo app — an impressive demo with no proven pain, no workflow fit, no willingness to pay — with a real business value app.

You've been using Claude Code for a few months. You shipped one project this year. There are two more in ~/projects/ you didn't finish, and a folder of ideas you never started. Each time you rebuild the same scaffolding from scratch, and somewhere around screen three the design drifts into 47 different blues — or you realize you never pressure-tested whether the bet was real at all.

Cheap AI lowers the cost of building, not the cost of being wrong. So the cheaper building gets, the more the loop matters.

BOSS helps you build faster without fooling yourself.

Not a guarantee you'll win — a way to decide faster, including quitting faster. That's the honest claim, and it's the only one on this page.

▸the idea

What “scaffolding” means here

It's the construction word, used literally. Scaffolding is the temporary structure that goes up around a building while it's being built. You don't live in it. It holds things steady while the real thing takes shape, it gets added to as the building gets taller, and it comes down when it's no longer holding anything up.

The thing a startup actually needs around the code is the same shape: a way to decide what to build, someone to tell you when the bet looks thin, a record of what you already chose and why. A funded company gets that from a process, a board, and a team. Solo with an AI, you get none of it — so you either invent it from scratch every project, or you skip it and find out later.

BOSS is that structure, and it goes up one level at a time. A one-evening idea gets almost nothing. A thing with real users gets more. You never pay for ceremony the project hasn't earned, and nothing gets bolted on that you can't take back off.

What it puts around you

a process that fits right now Four modes. The lightest one is five seconds and a file you can read in a minute.
people to ask 6 mentors for the parts code can't teach, plus builders who do the work.
a memory Every idea, decision and signal gets a file with a status. Your progress is rendered from those files, so there's no board to keep up to date and nothing that can quietly disagree with your repo.
someone who'll tell you the truth The conscience. It speaks when you're drifting, then stops. You can pause it.

And when it's holding nothing up, it comes down: boss remove.

▸go on

The rest of it

This page is the pitch. Everything under it has its own page.

Start → Install, then either start something new or bring BOSS into a repo you already have. Both paths, the real output, and how to take it back out.
The team → All 11 of them — 5 builders who make the product, 6 mentors who coach you — and which rung each one arrives on.
Keeping track → The other half: what BOSS writes down for you. Typed records, one closed status vocabulary, and why there is deliberately no status document anywhere.
Guide → When to use a BOSS verb and when to just talk to Claude, the ladder rung by rung, and what happens after you ship.
Cofounders → AI makes you both faster, which left alone makes a team drift apart. Dormant when you're solo.
For engineers → The technical positions BOSS holds on harnesses, context, agent security and testing — and who each one was learned from.
Charter → A conscience makes a cost visible; a censor makes a choice unavailable. The line, and the mechanism under it.
▸the name

Yeah. It's called BOSS. We know.

Everyone's had a bad boss — the one who hovered, took the credit, and never once told you the truth. This is the opposite of that one. BOSS stays quiet until you actually need it. It never puts its name on your work: you ship it, your name's on it. And it won't blow smoke up your skirt — its entire job is telling you when you're fooling yourself.

You're the boss. BOSS just has your back. The name's a joke. The conscience isn't.