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Install HELIX

HELIX is a methodology, an artifact-type catalog, and a single routing skill. It is not a CLI, a tracker, or a runtime. To use HELIX you make its content discoverable from the runtime you already use. Pick the guide that matches your environment.

Minimal runtime contract

A HELIX-compliant runtime can:

  1. Read markdown files from the project’s filesystem.
  2. Write markdown files to the project’s filesystem.
  3. Search files by path or pattern across the project.
  4. Optionally execute a shell command for verification or build/run modes.

That is the full contract. HELIX assumes nothing else — no tracker, no queue, no execution loop, no IDE integration, no language toolchain. Items 1–3 are required; item 4 is optional and only some routes (build, run, commit, release) make use of it.

Per-runtime install guides

Each guide is self-contained: file layout, install steps, invocation, and verification for one runtime. Pick the one that matches your environment; install more than one if you use more than one.

Claude Code
Install HELIX as a Claude Code skill, user-global or per-repo. Supports every HELIX route including build and run.
Codex CLI + Copilot
Covers the OpenAI Codex CLI (AGENTS.md discovery) and GitHub Copilot Workspace (editor-scoped instructions).
Databricks Code Genie
Upload the skill bundle to workspace storage and register it as a Genie skill. Shared across the workspace.

Source of truth

The runtime install guides are packaging notes. The normative HELIX content lives in two places:

  • Skills — the single routing skill with one public entry point (helix), one routing table, and one set of per-mode workflow contracts. There are no separate public helix-* skills.
  • Artifact types — the artifact-type catalog and methodology specification. Templates, prompts, quality criteria, and examples for every artifact type.

When a per-runtime guide and the skill or catalog disagree, the skill and catalog win.

No-fork policy

The per-runtime guides exist so adopters can install HELIX. They do not exist to localize, dialect, or rewrite the methodology.

  • The normative skill body lives in skills/helix/SKILL.md and nowhere else.
  • The artifact catalog lives in workflows/ and nowhere else.
  • If a runtime requires a shim — a manifest, wrapper, or packaging document — that shim lives inside the per-runtime guide, clearly marked as runtime-specific. It does not get pushed back into skills/ or workflows/.

Three install paths, one HELIX.