engram

Install and share AI agent skills from any git repository. No registry, no config — point engram at a repo and go.

Install

npx engram --help          # run without installing
npm install -g engram      # or install globally

How it works

A skill is a folder of instructions an AI agent loads (the open agent skills standard). engram pulls skills from a source (any git repo) and installs them for a provider (claude or copilot), either globally (all projects) or in the current project (committed to your repo).

Quickstart

engram add vercel-labs/agent-skills

This lists the skills in the repo and lets you pick which to install. That's the whole loop — browse, pick, done.

To skip the prompts:

engram add vercel-labs/agent-skills --skill frontend-design,deploy --provider claude --scope project

Commands

add — install skills from a repo

Lists the skills it finds, then installs your selection.

engram add owner/repo                       # interactive picker
engram add owner/repo --skill code-review   # one skill
engram add owner/repo --skill a,b           # several
engram add owner/repo --all                 # all skills

Flag	Default	Description
--skill	prompted	Comma-separated skill paths
--all	off	Install every skill in the source
--provider	prompted	Comma-separated: claude, copilot
--scope	global	global or project
--branch	main	Branch to fetch from
--path	auto	Sub-directory holding skills (auto-detected)

A source can be a GitHub shorthand (owner/repo) or any clonable git URL (https://…, git@…, ssh://…, file://…).

install — install one skill directly

Same as add but skips the listing — takes the source and skill as two arguments. Handy in scripts.

engram install owner/repo code-review
engram install owner/repo code-review --provider claude,copilot --scope project --path skills

sync — reproduce a project's skills

Re-installs every skill in skills.json, pinned to its recorded commit. Run this after cloning a repo or pulling new skills.

engram sync
engram sync --dir /path/to/project

remove — uninstall a skill

engram remove owner/repo/code-review --scope project   # use the id from `engram list`
engram remove owner/repo/code-review --scope project --keep-files
engram remove code-review                               # global: use the skill path

list — show installed skills

In an interactive terminal, engram list opens a selectable list grouped by Global and Project. Toggle skills with space, confirm with enter, then confirm the removal. In a non-TTY environment (scripts, CI), it falls back to the read-only listing.

engram list
engram list --scope project

search — browse a repo without installing

engram search owner/repo          # list all
engram search owner/repo review   # filter by name

Where skills go

Each skill is stored once in a canonical store (~/.local/share/engram/store/) and symlinked into each provider directory — one source of truth, with a copy fallback where symlinks aren't available.

	Claude	Copilot
global	~/.claude/skills/	~/.agents/skills/
project	.claude/skills/	.github/skills/

Project manifest (skills.json)

Project installs (--scope project) are recorded in skills.json, with each skill pinned to an exact commit. Commit this file so teammates can run engram sync and get the identical setup.

{
  "skills": {
    "vercel-labs/agent-skills/frontend-design": {
      "source": "vercel-labs/agent-skills",
      "skill": "frontend-design",
      "sha": "77208fa958572fbfe1b02d90ea1cacff0568cd8f",
      "providers": ["claude"]
    }
  }
}

Source layout

A source is a plain git repo. Skills are subdirectories, at the root or under a common folder (engram auto-detects it; override with --path):

my-skills-repo/
├── code-review/
│   └── code-review.md
└── standup/
    └── standup.md