# Ell Foundation

> Use when porting ell (language model programming) — LMP decorators, _lstr origin tracing, lexical-closure versioning, provider SPI, SQL/alembic store, evaluations, studio; prompt-to-program frameworks that version prompts as code (lexical closures + content hashes), trace which model call produced which text fragment through arbitrary string mutations, adapt one call pipeline to many vendor APIs behind a validation-enforced provider interface, or persist/version LLM programs and invocations in SQLite/Postgres with alembic. Source code and direct tests are ground truth; references carry decisive excerpts and graph retrieval.

- Skill: `ryan-brosas/ell-foundation` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 27 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ryan-brosas/ell-foundation`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ryan-brosas/ell-foundation/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: DevOps & Infra
- Author: ryan-brosas (https://skillmd.com/u/ryan-brosas)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ryan-brosas/ell-foundation

---

# ell: Language Model Programming Foundation

## Foundation contract

This is a cold, source-specific foundation, not an operational procedure. It is
historical, revision-pinned evidence rather than timeless guidance. Current
project source, tests, requirements, and runtime behavior outrank this
projection and decide what ships.

## Provenance and revision

- Source record: `ell`; portable upstream identity, license, coverage caveats, and retrieval history are preserved in the index.
- Recorded revision: `main@9d129846203e75efeb4e5cddd3fb1c164dc0b243`.
- Full provenance, coverage caveats, boundaries, and preserved evidence:
  `references/index.md`.

## Topic map

- Representative topics: Decorator pipeline; Traced strings; Message model;
  Tools; Provider SPI; Provider SPI / config; Versioning; Tracking.
- Scope and retrieval questions: `references/index.md#use-this-for`.
- Complete capsule chooser: `references/index.md#load-the-matching-source-dump`.
- Detailed grouped map: `references/index.md#capsule-map`.
- Source limitations and portability boundaries: `references/index.md#boundaries`.

## Retrieval

Open the index, choose one capsule matching the active question, and load only
that capsule. Revalidate its cited source and revision before relying on it. Do
not bulk-load the inventory, treat historical claims as current truth, or apply
this foundation as a procedure.