Why is installation via uv required instead of pipx?

[D7x7z49]

Hi! I'm new to the Python tooling ecosystem and trying to understand modern practices.

I noticed specify is installed with:
uv tool install --from git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git specify-cli

Why isn't pipx install git+https://... supported? Is it because the project isn't on PyPI, or does it rely on a feature specific to uv?

Just looking to learn - thanks for any insight 🤔

[mnriem]

Great question! pipx actually works fine here — there's nothing uv-specific about the project. You can install with:

pipx install git+https://github.com/github/spec-kit.git

We recommend uv in the docs because it's what we use internally and it handles Python version management alongside package installation, but the project uses a standard hatchling build backend and standard entry points, so any tool that can install from a git source will work.

The one thing to note is that specify-cli isn't published on PyPI (and there are unrelated packages with similar names there), so whether you use uv or pipx, you'll need the full git+https://... URL.

[D7x7z49]

Appreciate the details @mnriem.

Maybe a quick note about pipx in the docs could save others some confusion.

[mnriem]

Feel free to create a PR

[D7x7z49]

@mnriem see: #2288