From the source
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.
GitHub - EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin: Official Compound Engineering plugin for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and more
The EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin introduces the "Compound Engineering" methodology, which aims to make each unit of engineering work easier by reducing technical debt and codifying knowledge. It inverts traditional development by focusing heavily on thorough planning and review (80%) before execution (20%).
Curator noteDavid
Use in the 1-N phase (existing codebase, some users, developing new features). Use gstack for 0-1 phase.
Step by Step Workflow
`/ce-strategy`
outputs strategy.md which contains target problem, approach, target user/persona, 2-5 ley S.M.A.R.T metrics, and 2-4 tracks of work.
rerun the interview every few months so agent can reassess with shipped featuresPlanning and Ideation
/ce-ideate for generating and evaluating the big picture ideas before committing to a feature
/ce-brainstorm Q&A to think through the feature and generate a requirements doc
/ce-plan translate the requirements into implementation planExecution and Building
/ce-work executed the implementation plan while using task tracking and work trees
/ce-debug for root causes of failures
/ce-code-review to catch issues before merging
/ce-compound puts what you learned during development into code so that the next agent doesn't have to relearn the same lessons from scratchReviewing metrics and feedback
/ce-product-pulse interview for connecting up to 4 MCPs (posthot analytics, datadog tracing, payments, and read-only database)
outputs a report for most critical action points, usage metrics, performance metrics, and actionable follow-ups.
tip: schedule to run every morning or once a week, becomes working memory and heps answer questions about impact of certain features
What's not included
Prioritization. I have a custom
/prioritizecommand that I run daily. Compound engineering has a few planning skills—plan, ideate, brainstorm—that address this to some degree.Pulse comparison. Diffing two pulse reports—or tracking a specific metric across a window of saved reports—would be useful and isn’t in this version. The raw material is there (plain Markdown, dated filenames); a future skill could aggregate data across reports.
Per-stack customization paths. The skills ship with generalized interviews. If you use a tool that’s not named, such as a niche analytics provider or a custom internal system, you’ll edit the configuration by hand. That’s fine—the skills are designed to be readable and editable—but it’s worth knowing going in.
Updated May 23, 2026