Refacto Feature Scout

The general edition: point it at any project of yours. (The maintainer's own copy, tied to one product, lives elsewhere; fixes to the tool itself land here first.)

Feature Scout finds things people want from your project, asks you about them, builds the ones you say yes to, and checks its work before anything reaches your project.

It is for people who build with AI and would rather keep shipping than keep coming up with the next thing to ship.

Two things to know before you start:

It works on a copy of your project. Your own files aren't touched until you press a button that says so, and anything it adds can be taken straight back out again.
It runs on your own Claude account. Feature Scout has none of its own. Looking for ideas costs a dollar or two; building one costs a few dollars more. You set a daily limit and it stops there.

What you need

A project in a folder on your computer, saved with git. (If it isn't, setup offers to do that for you — you don't need to know what git is.)
Claude Code, signed in. Type claude in a terminal and follow the sign-in. If you'd rather use an API key from console.anthropic.com, that works too.

Getting started

uv tool install feature-scout      # or: pipx install feature-scout
cd /path/to/your/project
feature-scout setup

Setup asks a handful of questions, each with an answer already filled in, so you can finish it by pressing return. It works out how your project runs its tests, tries them once to be sure, and offers to read your project and write its own description of what it is and who it's for.

Then:

feature-scout watch

That leaves it running: it looks for ideas each morning, builds the ones you approve, and opens a page on your own computer where you say yes or no. Close the window and it stops.

The commands

Command	What it does
`feature-scout setup`	Set up a project. Start here.
`feature-scout watch`	Leave it running: looks for ideas, builds what you approve, serves the page.
`feature-scout review`	Just the page, without the loop.
`feature-scout scan`	Go looking for ideas right now.
`feature-scout scan --dry-run`	Show exactly what would be asked, without asking or spending anything.
`feature-scout status`	A list of where everything stands.
`feature-scout decide approve 14`	Say yes from the command line instead of the page.
`feature-scout undo 14`	Take a change back out of your project.
`feature-scout doctor`	Check that everything it needs is in place, and what you've spent.

How it decides something is good

An idea only gets proposed if it comes with a real link to someone actually asking for it — a post, a thread, a discussion. No link, no idea.

When you approve one, Feature Scout builds it on a copy of your project, then checks its own work rather than taking the builder's word for it: the change has to be finished and saved, and your own tests have to pass. If they don't, the whole attempt is thrown away and you're told why. If your project has no tests yet, it still builds, but it says plainly that nothing was checked and asks you to try it yourself.

What it will never do

Touch your working files. It works on a separate copy.
Put anything into your project until you say so.
Put anything live. Deploying is off unless you turn it on for a project during setup.
Use anybody's Claude account but yours.

Settings

feature-scout setup asks about everything, with a suggested answer for each question, and you can run it again any time to change your mind. It covers:

Your project — what it is, who uses it, who to research for, where it lives on the web.
Where ideas come from — your own feedback page, Reddit communities, search phrases, and anything else the researcher should look at or steer clear of.
What you want and don't — the kinds of ideas, things never to propose, and your product's plans (Free, Pro, ...) so every idea says which plan it belongs in.
How work is checked — your test command (tried once, right then), extra checks it found, rules the builder must always follow, and anything it must never run (a browser test suite that needs a browser, a deploy script).
Money — how many dollars of your Claude usage a day before it stops.
Which Claude does what — the research and the building can each use your Claude's default, the best (slower, dearer), a balanced one, or the fastest.
How you're told — everything shows on the private page in your browser: new ideas, finished builds, and anything that went wrong (under "Lately" at the top).
When it runs — the time of the daily look for ideas, and on a Mac whether to keep it running in the background.

Your answers about the project go in .feature-scout.json in the project folder, which you can edit by hand. Your choices about this computer (which Claude, the timing) stay in ~/.feature-scout/settings.env and never travel with the project. Never put a key or password in the project file — Feature Scout refuses to load one that has any.

Where things are kept

Everything Feature Scout makes lives in ~/.feature-scout/: the ideas, the logs, and the scratch copies of your project it builds in.

refacto-feature-scout