Engram Generate

Generate project-specific skills by analyzing Claude Code session history.

When to Use

• Starting work on a codebase you've worked on before
• Onboarding to a project (after initial exploration sessions)
• Periodically to capture evolving conventions
• Before handing off a project to another agent

Workflow

Step 1: Generate a skill from history

npx engram generate-skill --workspace . --days 30

This analyzes your Claude Code sessions and generates a SKILL.md encoding:

• Files that are frequently edited together
• Test and build commands used
• Common tool sequences
• Error patterns and their fixes

Step 2: Review the generated skill

The skill is created in

generated-skills/<project>-conventions/SKILL.md

.

Review it for accuracy:

• Remove any sensitive information
• Correct any misidentified patterns
• Add missing conventions you know about

Step 3: Install the skill

# Copy to your skills directory
cp -r generated-skills/<project>-conventions ~/.claude/skills/

# Or use the skills CLI
skills add ./generated-skills/<project>-conventions

Step 4: Keep it updated

Re-run periodically (e.g., monthly) to capture new patterns:

npx engram generate-skill --workspace . --days 30 --update

Integration with Skills CLI

Use with

skills sync

to keep generated skills up to date:

# Add engram as a skill source
skills source add https://github.com/bobamatcha/engram

# Sync skills from engram
skills sync engram-recall engram-generate

Output

The generated skill includes:

Section	What It Contains
Files Often Changed Together	File co-edit patterns
Testing	Test commands used in this project
Building	Build/compile commands
Common Workflows	Frequent tool sequences
Common Issues	Error patterns and fixes

Integration with Other Skills

Skill	When to Combine
engram-recall	Use recall before generate to review history
describe-codebase	Generate after describing to capture conventions
project-init	Generate skill after initial project setup

Example Output

# myproject Conventions

## Files Often Changed Together
- `src/index.ts` → also check: `src/types.ts`, `tests/index.test.ts`

## Testing
```bash
npm test
npm run test:watch

Common Workflows

• Read → Edit → Bash (used 15x)
• Write → Bash → Read (used 8x)

## Important

- Generated skills are starting points — refine them
- Don't include sensitive paths or credentials
- Update skills when project structure changes significantly