AI Skills & Agents That Make Each Unit of Engineering Work Easier

Official Compound Engineering plugin for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and more

TypeScript
Build Status
npm version

Philosophy

Each unit of engineering work should make subsequent units easier -- not harder.

Traditional development accumulates technical debt. Every feature adds complexity. Every bug fix leaves behind a little more local knowledge that someone has to rediscover later. The codebase gets larger, the context gets harder to hold, and the next change becomes slower.

Compound engineering inverts this. 80% is in planning and review, 20% is in execution:

  • Plan thoroughly before writing code with /ce-brainstorm and /ce-plan
  • Review to catch issues and calibrate judgment with /ce-code-review and /ce-doc-review
  • Codify knowledge so it is reusable with /ce-compound
  • Keep quality high so future changes are easy

The point is not ceremony. The point is leverage. A good brainstorm makes the plan sharper. A good plan makes execution smaller. A good review catches the pattern, not just the bug. A good compound note means the next agent does not have to learn the same lesson from scratch.

Workflow

/ce-strategy is upstream of the loop -- it captures the product's target problem, approach, persona, metrics, and tracks as a short durable anchor at STRATEGY.md. Ideate, brainstorm, and plan read it as grounding when present, so strategy choices flow into feature conception, prioritization, and spec.

The core loop is: brainstorm the requirements, plan the implementation, work through the plan, review the result, compound the learning, then repeat with better context.

Use /ce-ideate before the loop when you want the agent to generate and critique bigger ideas before choosing one to brainstorm. It produces a ranked ideation artifact, not requirements, plans, or code.

Skill Purpose
/ce-strategy Create or maintain STRATEGY.md -- the product's target problem, approach, persona, key metrics, and tracks. Read as grounding by ideate, brainstorm, and plan
/ce-ideate Optional big-picture ideation: generate and critically evaluate grounded ideas, then route the strongest one into brainstorming
/ce-brainstorm Interactive Q&A to think through a feature or problem and write a right-sized requirements doc before planning
/ce-plan Turn feature ideas into detailed implementation plans
/ce-work Execute plans with worktrees and task tracking
/ce-debug Systematically reproduce failures, trace root cause, and implement fixes
/ce-code-review Multi-agent code review before merging
/ce-compound Document learnings to make future work easier
/ce-product-pulse Generate a single-page, time-windowed pulse report on usage, performance, errors, and followups. Saves to docs/pulse-reports/

Quick Example

A typical cycle starts by turning a rough idea into a requirements doc, then planning from that doc before handing execution to /ce-work:

/ce-brainstorm "make background job retries safer"
/ce-plan docs/brainstorms/background-job-retry-safety-requirements.md
/ce-work
/ce-code-review
/ce-compound

For a focused bug investigation:

/ce-debug "the checkout webhook sometimes creates duplicate invoices"
/ce-code-review
/ce-compound

Getting Started

After installing, run /ce-setup in any project. It checks your environment, installs missing tools, and bootstraps project config.

The compound-engineering plugin currently ships 37 skills and 51 agents. See the full component reference for the complete inventory.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
/plugin install compound-engineering

Cursor

In Cursor Agent chat, install from the plugin marketplace:

/add-plugin compound-engineering

Or search for "compound engineering" in the plugin marketplace.

Codex

Three steps: register the marketplace, install the agent set, then install the plugin through Codex's TUI.

codex plugin marketplace add EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
bunx @every-env/compound-plugin install compound-engineering --to codex

Launch codex, run /plugins, find the Compound Engineering marketplace, select the compound-engineering plugin, and choose Install.

GitHub Copilot

For VS Code Copilot Agent Plugins:

Chat: Install Plugin from Source
EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
compound-engineering

For Copilot CLI:

/plugin marketplace add EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
/plugin install compound-engineering@compound-engineering-plugin

Factory Droid

droid plugin marketplace add https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
droid plugin install compound-engineering@compound-engineering-plugin

Qwen Code

qwen extensions install EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin:compound-engineering

Local Development

bun install
bun test
bun run release:validate

From your local checkout

For active development -- edits to the plugin source are reflected immediately.

alias cce='claude --plugin-dir ~/Code/compound-engineering-plugin/plugins/compound-engineering'

Run cce instead of claude to test your changes.

Troubleshooting

Codex skills work but review or research delegation fails
Run the agent install step:
bunx @every-env/compound-plugin install compound-engineering --to codex
Codex shows stale or duplicate CE skills
Back up old Bun-installed artifacts before switching to the native Codex plugin flow:
bunx @every-env/compound-plugin cleanup --target codex
Copilot, Droid, or Qwen loads stale CE skills
Back up old Bun-installed artifacts before using the native plugin path:
bunx @every-env/compound-plugin cleanup --target copilot
bunx @every-env/compound-plugin cleanup --target droid
bunx @every-env/compound-plugin cleanup --target qwen

Limitations

Codex native plugin install currently handles skills, not custom agents. The documented Bun followup is required until Codex supports agents in its native plugin spec.

OpenCode, Pi, Gemini, and Kiro installs are converter-backed and may change as those target formats evolve.

Release versions are owned by release automation. Routine feature PRs should not hand-bump plugin or marketplace manifest versions.

FAQ

Do I need Bun for Claude Code?
No. Claude Code installs directly from the plugin marketplace. Bun is only needed for converter-backed targets, Codex's current agent followup, local development, and cleanup of old converted installs.
Why does Codex need a separate Bun step?
Codex's native plugin flow installs skills from the Codex plugin manifest. It does not currently install the custom reviewer, researcher, and workflow agents that Compound Engineering skills delegate to. The Bun step fills that gap.
Where do I see all available skills and agents?
Read the Compound Engineering plugin README. It lists the current skill and agent inventory.
Where is release history?
GitHub Releases are the canonical release-notes surface. The root CHANGELOG.md points to that history.

About Contributions

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I do not accept outside contributions for any of my projects. I simply don't have the mental bandwidth to review anything, and it's my name on the thing, so I'm responsible for any problems it causes; thus, the risk-reward is highly asymmetric from my perspective. I'd also have to worry about other "stakeholders," which seems unwise for tools I mostly make for myself for free. Feel free to submit issues, and even PRs if you want to illustrate a proposed fix, but know I won't merge them directly. Instead, I'll have Claude or Codex review submissions via gh and independently decide whether and how to address them. Bug reports in particular are welcome. Sorry if this offends, but I want to avoid wasted time and hurt feelings. I understand this isn't in sync with the prevailing open-source ethos that seeks community contributions, but it's the only way I can move at this velocity and keep my sanity.

License

MIT License