melon

A dependency manager for agentic markdown — skills, agents, and prompts for your AI tools.

Installation · Quick Start · Why melon? · How it works · Manifest Reference · Commands

What is melon?

Melon manages markdown-based packages that AI coding assistants read as context. It resolves dependencies from GitHub, fetches them into a local cache, and places them into your agent's expected directory (e.g. .claude/skills/) so they are available immediately.

See it in action

Installation

📦 Global install

npm install -g @playsthisgame/melon

🐹 Go

go install github.com/playsthisgame/melon/cmd/melon@latest

Requires Git to be available on your PATH.

Quick Start

1. Initialize a project

melon init

This creates a melon.yaml manifest and the .melon/ cache directory. You'll be prompted for a package name, type, and which AI tools you use.

2. Add a dependency

Edit melon.yaml directly:

dependencies:
  github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev: "^1.0.0"
  github.com/anthropics/skills/skills/skill-creator: "main"

Dependency names are GitHub paths. You can use:

A full repo: github.com/owner/repo
A monorepo subdirectory: github.com/owner/repo/path/to/skill
A GitHub web URL: github.com/owner/repo/tree/main/path/to/skill (the tree/<branch>/ is stripped automatically)

Versions can be a semver constraint (^1.2.0, ~2.0.0, 1.0.0) or a branch name ("main").

3. Install

melon install

Melon resolves each dependency, fetches it via sparse git checkout, writes melon.lock, and places skills into your tool directories.

  resolving github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev (^1.0.0)...
  fetching github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev@1.0.0...
  + github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev@1.0.0
  linked github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev -> .claude/playsthisgame/agentic-spec-dev

How it works

melon.yaml          — declares your dependencies and target AI tools    ← commit
melon.lock         — pins exact versions, git tags, and content hashes ← commit
.melon/            — local cache; one directory per dep@version        ← commit
.claude/skills/    — symlinks into .melon/ created by melon install      ← commit

Skills are fetched once into .melon/ and symlinked into the configured tools directories.

Manifest Reference

# melon.yaml

name: my-agent
version: 0.1.0

description: "My coding agent"

dependencies:
  github.com/anthropics/skills/skills/skill-creator: "main"
  github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev: "^1.0.0"

# tool_compat drives where melon install places skills.
# Melon knows the conventions for each agent automatically:
#   claude-code    -> .claude/skills/
#   cursor         -> .agents/skills/
#   windsurf       -> .windsurf/skills/
#   roo            -> .roo/skills/
#   ... (and more)
tool_compat:
  - claude-code

# outputs is optional. Use it to override the automatic placement paths.
# outputs:
#   .claude/skills/: "*"

tags: []

Supported AI tools

AI tool	Project skills directory
`claude-code`	`.claude/skills/`
`cursor`	`.agents/skills/`
`windsurf`	`.windsurf/skills/`
`roo`	`.roo/skills/`
`codex`	`.agents/skills/`
`opencode`	`.agents/skills/`
`gemini-cli`	`.agents/skills/`
`github-copilot`	`.agents/skills/`
`cline`	`.agents/skills/`
`amp`	`.agents/skills/`

Commands

`melon init`

Scaffold a new melon.yaml and create the .melon/ store directory.

melon init
melon init --yes        # accept all defaults (for scripting)
melon init --dir ./app  # initialize in a different directory

`melon install`

Resolve dependencies, fetch them into .melon/, write melon.lock, and symlink skills into tool directories.

melon install
melon install --frozen    # fail if melon.lock would change (useful in CI)
melon install --no-place  # fetch and lock only — skip placement into agent dirs

`melon add`

Add a dependency to melon.yaml and run install. If no version is specified, the latest semver tag is resolved automatically.

melon add github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev          # resolves latest tag → ^1.2.0
melon add github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev@^1.0.0   # explicit constraint
melon add github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev@main     # branch pin

`melon remove`

Remove a dependency from melon.yaml, unlink its agent symlinks, and delete its .melon/ cache entry.

melon remove github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev

`melon list`

Show installed skills and audit installation state.

melon list                # list all installed skills
melon list --pending      # show skills in melon.yaml not yet installed
melon list --check        # verify skill symlinks exist in all tool directories
melon list --pending --check  # combine both checks

Default output:

  github.com/anthropics/skills/skills/skill-creator  main
  github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev   1.2.0

With --check:

  OK       github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev@1.2.0   .claude/skills/agentic-spec-dev
  MISSING  github.com/anthropics/skills/skills/skill-creator@main    .claude/skills/skill-creator

With --pending:

Pending (not installed):
  github.com/owner/repo/some-new-skill

`melon search`

Search for skills by keyword against the melon-index curated list. In a terminal, results are shown in an interactive list — navigate with ↑↓, press Enter to select, and melon will offer to run melon add for you.

melon search spec          # find spec-related skills
melon search git workflow  # find git workflow skills

Featured skills appear at the top of results. If nothing matches, melon will tell you and suggest submitting to the index.

`melon info`

Show metadata for a specific skill — description, author, and available versions — before installing it.

melon info github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev
melon info github.com/owner/repo/path/to/skill

Lock file

melon.lock is generated by melon install and should be committed to version control. It pins the exact version, git tag, repo URL, subdirectory, and a SHA-256 tree hash for each dependency.

generated_at: "2025-03-31T12:00:00Z"
dependencies:
  - name: github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev
    version: "1.2.0"
    git_tag: v1.2.0
    repo_url: https://github.com/playsthisgame/skills/agentic-spec-dev
    subdir: ""
    entrypoint: SKILL.md
    tree_hash: "sha256:abc123..."
    files:
      - SKILL.md

Use --frozen in CI to ensure the lock file is always up to date:

melon install --frozen

Why melon?

As AI coding assistants become more capable, teams are building and sharing libraries of skills. Without a proper dependency manager, keeping these skills consistent across developers, environments, and CI becomes a manual, error-prone process.

Melon gives you a single source of truth. Define all the skills your project needs in one melon.yaml file, commit it alongside your code, and every developer (and your CI pipeline) gets exactly the same set of skills with a single melon install.

Skills are versioned, not just copied. Melon pins exact versions, git tags, and SHA-256 content hashes in melon.lock. If a skill author publishes a breaking change, your team won't silently pick it up, you'll see the diff in the lock file and upgrade intentionally. This means you can trust that the skill running in CI today is the same one that ran last week.

It works naturally with CI. Run melon install --frozen in your pipeline to fail fast if the lock file is out of sync with the manifest. No surprises, no drift. Because .melon/ and the generated symlinks are committed to the repo, CI doesn't even need network access to place skills, everything is already there.

Works across your whole team and all your tools. List the AI tools your project uses under tool_compat and melon places each skill into every agent's expected directory at once. One manifest, one install command, every agent ready to go.

Why melon instead of npx skill installers?

Many agent skill collections ship a one-liner like npx install-skill <name> that copies files into your project. Melon takes a different approach:

	melon	npx installers
Reproducibility	`melon.lock` pins exact versions and content hashes	Each run may fetch a different version
Transitive deps	Resolves the full dependency graph	Usually single-package only
Multiple agents	`tool_compat` places skills for all your tools at once	Typically one target agent
Offline / CI	Already-fetched deps are cached in `.melon/`	Always fetches from the network
Node.js required	No — pure Go binary, no runtime needed	Yes
Removal	`melon remove` unlinks symlinks and purges the cache	Usually manual

License

MIT

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 49 Commits
.claude		.claude
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
assets		assets
cmd		cmd
internal		internal
npm		npm
openspec		openspec
pkg/semver		pkg/semver
.gitignore		.gitignore
.goreleaser.yaml		.goreleaser.yaml
LICENSE		LICENSE
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum

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melon

What is melon?

See it in action

Installation

Quick Start

How it works

Manifest Reference

Supported AI tools

Commands

`melon init`

`melon install`

`melon add`

`melon remove`

`melon list`

`melon search`

`melon info`

Lock file

Why melon?

Why melon instead of npx skill installers?

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melon

What is melon?

See it in action

Installation

Quick Start

How it works

Manifest Reference

Supported AI tools

Commands

melon init

melon install

melon add

melon remove

melon list

melon search

melon info

Lock file

Why melon?

Why melon instead of npx skill installers?

License

About

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`melon init`

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