Compound Engineering

Compound Engineering

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

Compound Engineering is a plugin of 37 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

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:

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:

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:

4. Click Add marketplace.
5. Search…