familiar: prompts as cli primitives

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000
ai, agents, tooling, release

compose and invoke agent prompts from reusable templates: conjurings + invocations.
pip install familiar

familiar is a tiny cli to automate tasks and bootstrap agents.

why?

i had a list of prompts on my system that i kept pulling out. the rest of the prompts lived somewhere in my claude history or was forever forgotten. i wanted a central but simple way to orchestrate my tasks and help me set up new agent definitions on the projects i work on and only slot in the arguments that i need to change every time.

what it is

new agents are conjured from composable templates, which will slot into an agent prompt. tasks are invoked, with or without arguments.

the system ships with a few interesting conjuring and invocations you can list, and you can override everything in your working directory via .familiar/, so you and your team can work on your own conventions.

additionally, familiar ships with a simple linter that vets your invocation format, and a plugin system that lets you define new agents and lint rules. it’s simple enough to be easily understandable and extensible without hassle, and powerful enough to support real workflows.

it’s new and in beta, but already useful if you have workflows you repeat and keep misremembering the prompts of.

quick start

pip install familiar-cli

# compose system rails (example: rust + security)
familiar conjure codex rust sec

# run a task prompt
familiar invoke codex code-review "the authentication module"

# see what's built in
familiar list