Sometimes the useful part of a GitHub repository is one folder: a skill, an example, a small piece of reference code. I built pluck for that case. Give it the folder’s ordinary GitHub URL and it downloads that folder through the API, without setting up a checkout of the whole repository.
It accepts file URLs too, handles several URLs in one invocation, and writes to /tmp by default. An explicit output directory changes the destination; the source folder or file name is preserved underneath it. Replacing an existing extracted folder requires the force flag.
Public repositories work without a token. Private ones use GH_TOKEN, GITHUB_TOKEN, or the active gh account, so the command fits the GitHub identity already available in a terminal or agent workspace.
It’s a small Go binary distributed through npm, and it leaves an ordinary local folder or file for the next command to use.