compound-engineering

Compound Engineering

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

Philosophy

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

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 readiness-based plan artifact
• 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 not ceremony. The point is leverage. 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.

Learn more

• Skill documentation catalog
• Compound engineering: how Every codes with agents
• The story behind compounding engineering

Workflow

The core loop is six steps: brainstorm the requirements, plan the implementation, work through the plan, simplify what you wrote, review the result, then compound the learning -- and repeat with better context.

Skill	Purpose
/ce-brainstorm	Interactive Q&A to think through a feature or problem and write a requirements-only unified plan before planning
/ce-plan	Enrich feature ideas or requirements-only plans into implementation-ready plans
/ce-work	Execute implementation-ready plans with worktrees and task tracking
/ce-simplify-code	Refine the freshly written code for clarity and reuse before review
/ce-code-review	Multi-agent review against the plan before merging
/ce-compound	Capture the learning into docs/solutions/ so the next loop starts smarter

Each cycle compounds: /ce-compound writes learnings that the next /ce-brainstorm and /ce-plan read as grounding -- brainstorms sharpen plans, plans inform future plans, reviews catch more issues, patterns get documented. That return arrow is the whole point.

Additional skills

These sit around the loop or get reached for on demand -- not every cycle needs them.

Skill	When to reach for it
/ce-ideate	Before the loop, when you don't yet know what to build -- generates and critically ranks grounded ideas, then routes the strongest one into /ce-brainstorm
/ce-strategy	Upstream anchor -- creates and maintains STRATEGY.md, read as grounding by ideate, brainstorm, and plan so strategy choices flow into every feature
/ce-product-pulse	Outer loop -- a time-windowed report on what users actually experienced (usage, performance, errors), saved to docs/pulse-reports/; its follow-ups feed back into ideation and brainstorming
/ce-debug	Instead of brainstorm -> plan -> work when the input is a bug rather than a feature -- reproduce, trace root cause, fix, then polish/review before PR handoff when warranted
/ce-pov	On demand, before you commit -- a decisive, project-grounded verdict on whether to adopt, switch to, or revisit an external technology, library, pattern, or platform; works cold or mid-session, and proposes the next step (/ce-plan, /ce-brainstorm, or a spike) from the verdict
/ce-explain	On demand, to keep learning -- turns a concept, a diff, an idea, or "what did I do this week?" into a dense, visual explainer written for you personally, with an optional check-in (predict-then-reveal for diffs, corrected exercises) that makes it stick

For the full catalog and how each skill chains together, see docs/skills. The complete inventory is below.

Quick Example

Finding a direction -- when you don't have a specific idea yet, ideate first, then carry the strongest survivor into the loop: