After feedback from our community, we have decided to release the AI skills under the MIT License.

To make this more clear, we moved the skills to a separate repository:

https://github.com/itsallcode/openfasttrace-ai-skills

Please note that we will replace the skills in the OpenFastTrace repository with a link to the new repository soon.

OpenFastTrace itself will remain licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.

AI skills often get heavily modified and customized by users, which can make it difficult to maintain a single, consistent codebase. By chosing the MIT license for the AI skills, we want to signal that we don’t expect users to contribute their modifications back to the original codebase. Of course, we still welcome improvements that everyone in the community can benefit from.

A lot happened in the world of OpenFastTrace in the last few weeks. OFT finally got its own website: https://openfasttrace.itsallcode.org. We use Jekyll to generate the site from the documentation in the OpenFastTrace repository.

We also have a draft for OFT’s own exchange and report format that will eventually replace the SpecObject format inherited from ReqM2.

Oh, and of course we have a fresh new release with 4.10.0.

But the biggest change is that we now also publish to Homebrew and have our own Debian repository so installing and updating OFT got a lot easier.

OpenFastTrace is now available from the new Itsallcode APT repository. Debian, Ubuntu, and users of other Debian-based distributions can install it through their normal package-management workflow.

OpenFastTrace 4.9.0 is the first version published there. From now on, we will publish new OFT releases as .deb packages in the repository shortly after their GitHub release.

# Configure the repository

First, install the itsallcode.org signing key and add the APT source:

The OpenFastTrace IntelliJ Plugin 0.10.0 is now available. This release introduces specification item status filtering to OpenFastTrace run configurations, giving teams finer control over which lifecycle states are included during traceability analysis.

# Item Status Filtering

OpenFastTrace supports four specification item lifecycle statuses:

• Draft: Work-in-progress items under active drafting.
• Proposed: Items that have reached maturity and are ready for approval review.
• Approved: Accepted specifications (the default state for items without an explicit status).
• Rejected: Discarded or superseded requirements retained for historical completeness.

In standard OpenFastTrace workflows, only approved items are traced against architecture and implementation, while non-approved items are treated as informational. However, depending on review workflows and specification phases, developers and reviewers often need to trace draft or proposed items before formal approval.

The OpenFastTrace IntelliJ Plugin 0.9.0 is now available. Following the Test Runner UI introduced in version 0.8.0, this release streamlines project setup with specialized run configuration templates, clarifies defect reporting by distinguishing direct and transitive defects, and upgrades the bundled OpenFastTrace core to 4.9.0.

# Run Configuration Templates

To simplify setting up traceability, version 0.9.0 comes with specialized run configuration templates.

When creating a new OpenFastTrace run configuration (Run | Edit Configurations... | + | OpenFastTrace), you can now choose from four pre-configured templates: