Installation

To use ccp you will need python >= 3.6.

Core Library

You can install the core ccp library with:

pip install ccp-performance

Optional Dependencies

Streamlit Web Application

To use the Streamlit web application interface, install with the app extra:

pip install ccp-performance[app]

Development Dependencies

For development work, install with the dev extra:

pip install ccp-performance[dev]

You can also combine extras:

pip install ccp-performance[dev,app]

AI assistance

ccp ships with an agent skill — a set of concise compressor-performance recipes in the Agent Skills open standard that teaches AI coding agents how to build states, points and impellers and run performance analyses with ccp. After installing ccp, install the skill with:

ccp-install-skill

This detects the AI coding agents on your machine (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Codex) and copies the skill to each one’s personal skills directory. Useful variations:

ccp-install-skill --project          # install into the current project (shared with your team)
ccp-install-skill --agent claude     # install for a specific agent only
ccp-install-skill --uninstall        # remove the skill

Once installed, the skill activates automatically whenever you ask your agent about centrifugal compressor performance with ccp — for example, “create an impeller from these test points and convert the curves to the new suction condition”. In Claude Code you can also invoke it explicitly with the /ccp slash command.

The skill is a snapshot of the recipes for the installed ccp version, so re-run ccp-install-skill after upgrading ccp.

REFPROP

To run ccp you need to have REFPROP in your computer, and an environment variable called RPPREFIX pointing to the REFPROP path.

If you have not set a RPPREFIX environment variable, you can do the following before importing ccp:

import os
os.environ['RPPREFIX'] = <path/to/REFPROP/folder>

import ccp