serpentine init

Wire Serpentine into an existing project in one command.

Set up Serpentine in an existing project.

serpentine init [PATH]

Arguments:
  PATH    Project directory (default: current directory)

What it does

Running serpentine init creates or updates four things:

  1. .serpentine.yml — Default configuration file. Edit this to customize which extensions and directories to include or exclude.

  2. .gitignore — Appends .serpentine to prevent the cache directory from being committed.

  3. .claude/skills/ — Installs two Claude Code skills:

    • serpentine-orient — structural orientation skill, runs stats and catalog at the start of tasks
    • serpentine-check — blast-radius skill, runs analyze --select before edits

  4. CLAUDE.md — Appends a ## Serpentine section with navigation instructions so Claude Code knows to use these skills.

Already-existing files are skipped rather than overwritten, so it’s safe to re-run.

Example output

$ serpentine init

✓ Created .serpentine.yml
✓ Updated .gitignore
✓ Installed .claude/skills/serpentine-orient
✓ Installed .claude/skills/serpentine-check
✓ Updated CLAUDE.md

Done. Your agent orients structurally by default.

Agent compatibility

The installed skills work with any agent that reads CLAUDE.md or supports skills files:

  • Claude Code
  • Cursor
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Codex (OpenAI)
  • OpenCode

For agents that don’t support CLAUDE.md, the structured JSON output from analyze and catalog can still be fed directly into the agent’s context via tool calls or file reads.