vd is a single-binary vendoring package manager for the skills that power your coding agents.
Skills live in your repo as plain files. vd fetches them from any upstream, locks them with a SHA, and dispatches them to every agent in your stack.

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Supported agents

vd builds a vendor-locked skills tree once and emits the manifest each agent stack expects. Today that's:

Agent	Status	What vd build emits
Claude Code	✅ first-class	.claude-plugin/marketplace.json + plugin.json (bundle or per-skill mode)
OpenAI Codex	✅ first-class	.agents/skills/<name> repo-scope symlinks; vd install codex for user scope

More targets land as the coding-agent ecosystem grows — the emitter interface (internal/target/iface.go) is intentionally small so adding a new agent is a single file.

Why vd-cli

You're already running two or three coding agents. They all want skills but each wants a different layout, a different manifest, a different install path. So you copy-paste between repos, lose track of what came from where, and your agents drift out of sync with their upstreams.

vd-cli flips this:

• One manifest — skills.toml is the source of truth for which skills, from where, pinned at what SHA.
• One sync — vd sync fetches atomically, detects local edits before overwriting, populates a deterministic cache.
• One build — vd build regenerates every agent's manifest byte-for-byte from the lock. No drift between Claude's marketplace.json and Codex's symlinks.
• No vendor lock-in — your skills are normal directories on disk. Delete vd-cli and they still work.

Install

Homebrew (recommended):

brew install vanducng/tap/vd

go install:

go install github.com/vanducng/vd-cli/v2/cmd/vd@latest

Pre-built binaries: see releases for darwin/linux/windows × amd64/arm64.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/vanducng/vd-cli.git
cd vd-cli
make build && mv vd /usr/local/bin/vd

Quick start

# 1. Bootstrap a manifest at the repo root
vd init

# 2. Track an upstream skill
vd add browserbase/skills/browser --as browser

# 3. Vendor it locally (fetches, hashes, locks)
vd sync

# 4. Emit manifests for every configured agent
vd build

# 5. (Optional) install local skills into Codex user scope
vd install codex

After these five commands:

• skills/browser/ — the vendored skill source, ready to edit.
• .claude-plugin/marketplace.json + plugin.json — Claude Code picks it up automatically.
• .agents/skills/browser — Codex repo-scope symlink resolves to skills/browser/.
• skills.lock — pinned commit SHA, content hash, every byte deterministic.

Commands

Command	Description
vd init	Create skills.toml at the repo root
vd add <source>/<path>	Register an upstream skill
vd list	Print tracked skills as a table
vd sync [skill...]	Vendor tracked/pinned skills; runs vd build
vd update [skill...]	Bump tracked skills to upstream HEAD
vd diff <skill>	Diff upstream cache vs local skills/<name>/
vd doctor	Report drift between skills.lock and skills/
vd pin <skill> <sha>	Lock a skill to a specific commit SHA
vd detach <skill>	Stop tracking; leave files on disk
vd remove <skill>	Remove from manifest, lock, and (default) disk
vd build [target...]	Emit manifests + symlinks for each agent target
vd install [agent] [skill...]	Install local skills into Codex or Claude Code user scope
vd cache clean	Delete the .vd-cache/ download cache

Run vd <command> --help on any verb for flags, examples, and exit codes.

Global flags

Flag	Short	Description
--quiet	-q	Suppress non-error output
--verbose	-v	Verbose output (reserved)
--root		Override repo root path
--version		Print vd <version>

Repo root resolution: --root flag → VD_ROOT env → walk up from CWD to the first .git/. Both --root and VD_ROOT are validated and error out on invalid values.

Environment

Var	Effect
VD_ROOT	Pin a default repo root
VD_NO_UPDATE_CHECK	Disable the upstream version check
XDG_CACHE_HOME	Override the cache directory (default ~/.cache)
CI	When set, the version check is auto-disabled

Version check

vd-cli checks GitHub for new releases at most once per 24 hours and prints a one-line nudge to stderr when a newer version exists:

vd 2.0.0 (latest: 2.0.1). Upgrade: brew upgrade vd

The check runs in the background and is silent on any failure. Disabled automatically for dev builds, when CI is set, and when stderr is not a terminal. Set VD_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to opt out explicitly.

Documentation

• Usage guide — core workflows and common commands
• Command reference — flags, examples, exit codes
• Config schema — every skills.toml field
• FAQ — naming, conflicts, dirty-refuse, design decisions
• Migration guide — from copy-paste, subtree, or submodules
• Contributing — dev setup, release flow, commit style
• Changelog — version history

License

MIT © Duc Nguyen