The Complete BMAD Field Guide
This is a comprehensive, version-current reference for BMAD (Build More Architect Dreams), the open-source framework for building software with AI agents. It is meant to be the one place you look for everything about the framework: what it is and where it came from, how to install and run it on any machine, every module and skill, the full lifecycle, complete project runs, memory and measurement, models and tokens, benchmarking every dimension, team collaboration, extension, and the pitfalls to avoid.
Everything here tracks the latest stable release, v6.10.0 (July 3, 2026), and is grounded in the framework's own source and documentation.
On this page
What this guide covers, and what it defers
BMAD's research skill, Deep Recon, is deep enough to deserve its own set of documents, and they already exist in the companion Notes & gists collection: Foundations, Concept-by-concept how-to, Complete guide, and the Research reference. This field guide is the rest of the framework, and it references those four whenever research comes up rather than repeating them.
How to read it
The pages build on each other, but each stands alone as a reference. Start with Overview & invention for what BMAD is and the five-layer model that the rest of the guide leans on, then SDD vs agile for the idea that makes the whole method make sense. If you just want to get running, jump to Install & first run.
BMAD is host-agnostic: it runs on Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and other agents. This guide's worked host is Claude Code, so every chapter closes with an "Under Claude Code" section that decodes how the chapter's idea lands on the host's real mechanics and internals (skills and progressive disclosure, subagents, plan mode, hooks, MCP, settings precedence, memory and compaction, prompt caching, and headless runs). The method stays portable; those sections are where it meets the machine. 👉