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Solo Dev Tackles AI Context Gap When Specs Live Across Multiple Repos

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A developer building personal projects as separate microservices ran into a recurring problem: AI coding tools like Cursor can only access files within the currently open workspace, making cross-repo spec references difficult. Two broad approaches exist — adding all relevant repos to a multi-root workspace, or having the AI fetch files by path on demand — but each carries trade-offs in noise, token usage, or context bloat. Cursor's April 2026 update improved multi-root workspace support for cross-repo edits, yet the core issue of indexing entire repos just to read a few spec files remains. The developer also evaluated self-hosted documentation tools and external SaaS options, finding them either too rigid, too costly, or ill-suited for a solo workflow. Unable to find a satisfactory off-the-shelf solution, the developer began exploring building a lightweight custom tool to bridge the gap between isolated repos and AI context windows.

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