Skills
engram ships six skills. In Claude Code they are copied into .claude/skills/ and become slash commands. Other MCP clients get them as MCP prompts.
| Skill | When the agent uses it |
|---|---|
remember-decision | A decision was made or an option rejected; "remember this", "let's go with…" |
recall | "Did we…?", "where did we discuss…?", or entering an unfamiliar part of the code |
why-we-did-this | "Why is X like this?", "why don't we use Y?", or before changing an established pattern |
avoid-past-mistakes | Before a refactor, a migration, a dependency swap, or work on risky files |
project-summary | Onboarding, "catch me up", or coming back after a break |
session-handoff | "Wrap up", "save progress", or the end of a task |
remember-decision
It records the decision in a fixed shape: context, decision, why, alternatives, consequences. It first checks for an earlier decision this one replaces. Alternatives that were seriously considered are saved as rejected decisions and linked with rejected_because.
avoid-past-mistakes
It summarizes the plan and calls engram_check with the plan and files. For each warning it decides whether it applies, then either adjusts the plan or stops to ask. If something goes wrong anyway, it records a new pitfall.
Writing your own
A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md:
markdown
---
name: release-checklist
description: Before cutting a release, recall release pitfalls and principles.
---
1. Call `engram_recall` with `kinds: ["pitfall", "principle"]` and `tags: ["release"]`.
2. …$ARGUMENTS is replaced with whatever the user typed after the command.