Compound Engineering

AI skills that make each unit of engineering work easier than the last.

Compound Engineering is a plugin of 38 skills for AI coding agents. It structures the work around a loop — brainstorm, plan, build, review, then capture what you learned — so the knowledge from each change is written down where the next change can read it.

It runs on 14 agent hosts, including Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

Maintained by Kieran Klaassen and Trevin Chow, with contributions from the open-source community.

For understanding before a change, ask ce-explain how the relevant behavior works and why it exists. For a recommendation, use ce-pov; “oracle this” adds independent model opinions. Both can contribute to another workflow without a separate human interaction.

Install

Claude Code

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

[!IMPORTANT] Already have Compound Engineering installed? Refresh the marketplace before updating — see Upgrading. Running /plugin update alone keeps you on the old version.

Cursor

In Cursor Agent chat, install from the plugin marketplace:

/add-plugin compound-engineering

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

Grok Bot

Grok Bot is its own app, but it uses your Cursor account and plugin library. There is no separate Grok Bot login. Install Compound Engineering once on that account and Grok Bot agents can load it.

In Cursor Agent chat:

/add-plugin compound-engineering

Or search for "compound engineering" in the Cursor plugin marketplace. Do not run /add-plugin in the Grok Bot chat, and do not clone this repository onto the Grok Bot computer.

Codex App

Compound Engineering is not listed in Codex's built-in plugin marketplace yet. Add it as a custom marketplace:

1. In the Codex app, open Plugins from the sidebar.

2. Click the arrow next to Create, then select Add marketplace.

3. Enter:

   Field	Value
   Source	EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
   Git ref	main
   Sparse paths	leave blank

4. Click Add marketplace.

5. Search for Compound Engineering, install compound-engineering-plugin, then restart Codex.

The Codex app install is self-contained for Compound Engineering. Specialist reviewer and research behavior lives inside the skills as local prompt assets; no separate custom-agent install step is required.

Codex CLI

Register the marketplace, then install the plugin.

1. Register the marketplace with Codex:

   codex plugin marketplace add EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
   

2. Install the plugin:

   codex plugin add compound-engineering@compound-engineering-plugin
   

   You can also launch codex, run /plugins, find the Compound Engineering marketplace, select the compound-engineering plugin, and choose Install. Restart Codex after install completes.

The native Codex plugin install is self-contained for Compound Engineering. Specialist reviewer and research behavior lives inside the skills as local prompt assets; no separate custom-agent install step is required.

For a non-default Codex profile, run every Codex-related step against the same CODEX_HOME. This example installs CE into a work profile:

CODEX_HOME="$HOME/.codex/profiles/work" codex plugin marketplace add EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
CODEX_HOME="$HOME/.codex/profiles/work" codex plugin add compound-engineering@compound-engineering-plugin

The marketplace step only makes the plugin available; the plugin install is what activates the native CE skills for that profile.

Another editor or CLI? Kimi Code CLI, Cline, Grok Build CLI, Devin CLI, GitHub Copilot, Factory Droid, Qwen Code, OpenCode, Pi, oh-my-pi (omp), and Antigravity CLI are all supported — see More install options.

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Philosophy

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

Invocation syntax: this README uses /skill-name examples for slash-skill hosts. In Codex, invoke installed skills with $skill-name (for example, $ce-plan and $lfg). In oh-my-pi (omp), these prompts can model-route to visible skills; use the native deterministic /skill:<name> form for manual-only or hidden skills (for example, /skill:ce-polish). /goal remains a Codex built-in command.

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 using one plan artifact that grows from requirements into implementation planning
• 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 leverage, not ceremony. 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.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗