[Bug]: /speckit-implement counts checkbox markers inside fenced code blocks — example checkboxes can falsely block implementation

Open Beginner friendly
#4,272 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
84/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
markdown
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start with .claude/skills/speckit-implement/SKILL.md, at the “Check checklists status” instructions, and compare its checklist parsing contract with .claude/skills/speckit-clarify/SKILL.md. Verify the behavior using a checklist containing checkbox examples inside a fenced code block and real checklist items outside it. Done means fenced examples are ignored while per-checklist total, checked, and unchecked counts remain correct.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Version

spec-kit v1.0.1 (.claude/skills/speckit-implement/SKILL.md, "Check checklists status")

Description

The checklist scan counts every - [ ] / - [x] / - [X] line in every checklist file, including lines inside fenced code blocks. A checklist that documents the checkbox format with an example fence therefore reports phantom unchecked items, and implementation is blocked by checkboxes that aren't real work items.

The clarify command already handles this correctly — .claude/skills/speckit-clarify/SKILL.md specifies parsing Markdown outside code fences — so this is an internal inconsistency between the two commands' parsers as much as a bug.

Expected behavior

Count checkbox markers only outside fenced code blocks (same contract as the clarify parser), keeping the existing per-checklist total/checked/unchecked reporting.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
138k
Forks
12.4k
Avg merge
3d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
136

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from github/spec-kit

All issues in github/spec-kit

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.