Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Getting Started with Engram

Stop re-explaining your codebase to every new AI session.

Engram gives your AI agents persistent memory — a knowledge graph that lives in your git repo. Plans, decisions, and context survive across sessions. A new agent queries engram and picks up where the last one left off.

Git tracks what changed. Engram tracks why.

Install

# Linux / macOS (one line)
curl -fsSL https://github.com/vincents-ai/engram/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

# Or: cargo install engram
# Or: nix run github:vincents-ai/engram -- --help

engram --version   # verify

See the README for all platforms including Windows and manual installs.

Set Up (2 minutes)

cd your-project

# 1. Initialize engram in your repo
engram setup workspace

# 2. Create your profile
engram setup agent --name "Your Name" --agent-type operator

# 3. Install the commit hook (requires task UUID in every commit)
engram validate hook install

Done. Now use it.

The Workflow: Plan → Execute → Remember

Plan

engram task create --title "Add user authentication" --priority high

Execute & Document

# Save reference material
engram context create --title "OAuth2 Spec" --source "https://oauth.net/2/"

# Link it to the task
engram relationship create \
  --source-id <TASK_ID> --source-type task \
  --target-id <CONTEXT_ID> --target-type context \
  --relationship-type references

# Record a decision
engram reasoning create \
  --title "Chose JWT over sessions" \
  --task-id <TASK_ID> \
  --content "Stateless, scales horizontally, no server-side session store."

Remember

# Ask a question across everything you've stored
engram ask query "why did we choose JWT for auth?"

# What should I work on next?
engram next

For AI Agents

If you use Claude Code, OpenCode, Goose, or similar tools:

# Install core skills (14 — teaches your agent the engram loop)
engram skills setup

# Install all skills (44 — planning, architecture, review, debugging, TDD, compliance)
engram setup skills

Your agent now knows to search engram before acting, store decisions after making them, and link everything. When a new session starts, it runs:

engram ask query "full-fidelity handoff"

…and gets the full project state.

Next Steps