GhostPaw Grimoire

@ghostpaw/grimoire

Agent skills as SKILL.md folders, every improvement sealed as a git commit you can roll back.

A procedural knowledge engine for Node.js, built on Git, SQLite, and the filesystem.

Grimoire treats spells (learned procedures), evidence, versioning, and health as one coherent model instead of separate systems. It ships as a single prebundled blob with zero runtime dependencies, designed for two audiences at once: human developers working directly in code, and LLM agents operating through a structured soul / tools / skills runtime.

Install

Release binary (default)

The installers verify the archive against SHA256SUMS before installing. The Unix lines below install the latest release to ~/.local/bin and add that directory to PATH for the current shell only; they do not edit ~/.profile or any other file. The Windows installer updates the user PATH. Choose the line for your target.

Linux x64:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --target linux-x64 && export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Linux arm64:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --target linux-arm64 && export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

macOS arm64:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --target darwin-arm64 && export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

macOS x64:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --target darwin-x64 && export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Windows x64:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.ps1 | iex

To keep ~/.local/bin on PATH in new shells, this variant also appends one line to ~/.profile (skip it if that directory is already on your PATH):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --target linux-x64 && echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.profile && export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

To pin a version instead of taking the latest release, pass --version (replace the target as needed):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GhostPawJS/grimoire/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --target linux-x64 --version 0.6.0 && export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

ghostpaw-grimoire --version prints the version and variant, --version --short the bare semver, and --version --json a {name, version, variant, target} record.

The binary includes its runtime. ghostpaw-grimoire skill --list lists the bundled workflow guides; ghostpaw-grimoire skill prints one.

MCP configuration

claude mcp add ghostpaw-grimoire -- "$HOME/.local/bin/ghostpaw-grimoire" mcp

/plugin marketplace add GhostPawJS/grimoire /plugin install ghostpaw-grimoire@ghostpaw-grimoire

Codex CLI (~/.codex/config.toml):

[mcp_servers.ghostpaw-grimoire]

command = "/absolute/home/.local/bin/ghostpaw-grimoire" args = ["mcp"]

Cursor, Claude Desktop, or a project .mcp.json:

{"mcpServers":{"ghostpaw-grimoire":{"command":"/absolute/home/.local/bin/ghostpaw-grimoire","args":["mcp"]}}}

Download server.mcpb from releases for clients supporting MCP Bundles. Build the supplied Dockerfile with docker build -t ghostpaw-grimoire . and mount /data for persistence.

Supports MCP 2026-07-28 and initialize-based protocol versions (2025-11-25, 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05). The database defaults to ~/.ghostpaw/grimoire.db; --db overrides GHOSTPAW_GRIMOIRE_DB. Spells default to ~/.ghostpaw/grimoire/; set GHOSTPAW_GRIMOIRE_ROOT to choose another directory. No credentials are required for local tools.

npx / npm (for npm-based environments)

Requires Node 24 or newer:

npm install -g @ghostpaw/grimoire

npx -y @ghostpaw/grimoire --help

For an npm-based MCP configuration:

{"mcpServers":{"ghostpaw-grimoire":{"command":"npx","args":["-y","@ghostpaw/grimoire","mcp"]}}}

Library (for harnesses embedding it in code)

npm install @ghostpaw/grimoire

import { DatabaseSync } from 'node:sqlite';

import { initGrimoireTables, write, read } from '@ghostpaw/grimoire';

const db = new DatabaseSync(':memory:'); initGrimoireTables(db); write.dropNote(db, { source: 'practice', content: 'Verify the build before release.' }); const notes = read.pendingNotes(db); db.close();

A session with a linux-x64 release binary against a fresh database and spell directory (output piped through jq to keep it short):

The same session as an animated GIF.

Other release installers:

mise use -g github:GhostPawJS/grimoire

ubi --project GhostPawJS/grimoire --exe ghostpaw-grimoire --in ~/.local/bin eget GhostPawJS/grimoire

For aqua, define a github_release package in aqua.yaml:

registries:

• name: grimoire type: local path: grimoire-registry.yaml

packages:

• name: GhostPawJS/grimoire@v0.4.3 registry: grimoire

grimoire-registry.yaml:

packages:

• type: github_release repo_owner: GhostPawJS repo_name: grimoire asset: ghostpaw-grimoire-{{trimV .Version}}-{{.OS}}-{{.Arch}}.tar.gz format: tar.gz replacements: { amd64: x64 } overrides:
• goos: windows asset: ghostpaw-grimoire-{{trimV .Version}}-windows-{{.Arch}}.zip format: zip files:
• name: ghostpaw-grimoire

Install scripts verify SHA256SUMS. To verify a downloaded archive's build attestation:

gh attestation verify <archive> -R GhostPawJS/grimoire

Set GHOSTPAW_VERIFY=attestation for attestation verification in install.sh. Binaries are unsigned; macOS binaries carry an ad-hoc signature. For a browser download on macOS, remove quarantine with xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/ghostpaw-grimoire. Linux binaries require glibc 2.28+; use npx on Alpine. See the binary build workflow.

Archive and binary sizes vary by release; see the assets on the release page.

The install check runs on ubuntu-24.04, macos-15 and windows-2025.

State

The database defaults to ~/.ghostpaw/grimoire.db; select it with --db or GHOSTPAW_GRIMOIRE_DB. Spells default to ~/.ghostpaw/grimoire; select the root with --root or GHOSTPAW_GRIMOIRE_ROOT. CLI flags take precedence over the environment. Each root stores Git history in /.grimoire-git, excluded from discovery. --git-dir overrides GHOSTPAW_GRIMOIRE_GIT_DIR, which overrides this default. A legacy /.grimoire-git is copied into the root only when its configured work tree or HEAD tree identifies this root. The original stays in place, with a MIGRATED_TO marker. Shared or uncertain legacy repositories stay at their old location and produce one shared_git_dir warning per result; new writes use the root-local repository. Git writes use a per-repository advisory lock and path-scoped commits. File databases use WAL and a five-second busy timeout. Library callers supply their database and should configure those pragmas before use.

CLI

ghostpaw-grimoire search <query>

ghostpaw-grimoire review ghostpaw-grimoire inspect ghostpaw-grimoire spell inscribe --content TEXT ghostpaw-grimoire spell update|hone [flags] ghostpaw-grimoire spell shelve|unshelve|delete|repair ghostpaw-grimoire spell move ghostpaw-grimoire spell rollback ghostpaw-grimoire spell repair-all ghostpaw-grimoire note drop --source SOURCE ghostpaw-grimoire draft submit --rationale TEXT --note-ids ID --chapter NAME ghostpaw-grimoire draft approve|dismiss ghostpaw-grimoire catalogue run ghostpaw-grimoire scout adopt ghostpaw-grimoire scout search ghostpaw-grimoire scout check-updates ghostpaw-grimoire scout apply-update ghostpaw-grimoire mcp|skill|tools|describe|call|completions|version|help

Global flags can appear anywhere: --db , --root , --git-dir , --json, --quiet, --compact, --help/-h, --version/-V/-v, --no-color. NO_COLOR is accepted; output uses no terminal colors. Noun-verb commands print the full tool result as JSON with --json or when stdout is piped. Write results contain compact metadata by default; --verbose includes full spell content. --quiet suppresses stdout. --compact removes JSON indentation.

Use help spell, bare spell, or spell update --help for schema-derived help. skill --list lists bundled guides; skill prints the guide. Search tokenizes multiple terms, removes common English stopwords, stems common suffixes, and scores name/description/body matches with weights 3/2/1 and inverse document frequency. Trigram Jaccard similarity of at least 0.3 adds fuzzy metadata matches. Results expose score and sort by score, rank, then path. Legacy name and description substring matches remain supported. Uncheckpointed spells remain visible. Inscribe conflicts unless --force is supplied; identical forced content returns no_op when it also matches committed content. Hone accepts positional paths and returns no_op without a diff; supplied note IDs are still marked distilled. --note-ids and --note_ids both work for hone and draft submit. Inspect includes commit hashes, short hashes, subjects, and ISO dates for rollback. --now accepts epoch milliseconds, ISO 8601 date-time, or YYYY-MM-DD. Values more than one minute ahead return a projection with a projected warning and preserve stored health and notes. review index --format prompt returns only the formatted prompt block in data. Catalogue health fields measure honing pressure, rather than a quality rating: a fresh seal can have zero pressure. Dormancy has a 14-day grace period after the first seal. Catalogue expires pending notes older than 90 days and keeps at most 50 pending notes, expiring the oldest first with