Hand off a spec to Claude Code without losing context

The single biggest reason coding agents produce wrong-but-confident output: they're given a one-line task with none of the surrounding intent. Pathmode fixes the handoff. The same spec your team reviewed becomes the prompt your agent sees.

The input

A finished IntentSpec — anchored to evidence, with outcomes, edge cases, and verification criteria. The kind of spec you'd be comfortable handing to a senior engineer.

The flow

1. Open the Export to Agent modal. Every IntentSpec has an Export to Agent button in the Spec panel.

2. Choose your target. Two destinations: Claude Code (with optional MCP setup for live data) or Cursor (copy-paste prompt). Format toggle: markdown or JSON.

3. Copy the prompt. The export includes:

• The objective and goal
• Linked evidence items (the actual user quotes, not just summaries)
• All outcomes with their verification criteria
• Edge cases as explicit "must handle" requirements
• Constraints and out-of-scope notes

4. Paste into your agent. In Claude Code, that's claude followed by paste — or, if you set up the Pathmode MCP server, the agent pulls intent live without copy-paste.

The output

An agent run that:

• Doesn't invent requirements that weren't in the spec
• Asks fewer clarifying questions because the spec already grappled with the obvious ones
• Produces verification-ready output because the success criteria were part of the prompt
• Stays in scope because constraints were spelled out

Why this works better than copy-pasting a PRD

PRDs are written for humans. They lean on shared team context — the implicit "everyone knows we don't support multi-tenant yet" stuff. Agents have no such context.

The Pathmode export reformats your spec into agent-shaped language: evidence as quoted excerpts, outcomes as testable assertions, edge cases as enumerated requirements. Same intent, agent-readable surface.

Try it yourself

1. Open any finished IntentSpec in Pathmode
2. Click Export to Agent → Claude Code
3. Paste into your terminal (or set up the MCP server for live access)
4. Compare the agent's output to a run with just a one-line task description

Related

• Playbook: The Anatomy of an Agent-Ready Spec
• Use case: Generate a PR description from the linked IntentSpec
• Use case: Audit a draft spec for missing edge cases