Pilot Shell: Spec-driven plans; enforced quality gates; persistent knowledge

Pilot Shell is a new open-source command-line tool that aims to bring software engineering discipline directly into the terminal. It introduces three core ideas: spec-driven plans (you define what "done" looks like before coding), enforced quality gates (it runs tests/linters automatically and blocks progress if they fail), and persistent knowledge (it maintains a project memory across sessions so the same mistakes aren't repeated). The tool is meant for developers frustrated by chaotic, ad-hoc workflows—it replaces informal toggling between coding and testing with a structured loop. Max Ritter, the creator, is a known figure in the developer-tools space. This fits a broader trend of "guardrail" tooling (e.g., pre-commit hooks, CI/CD pipelines) but pushes the concept further by embedding it in the interactive shell itself.