The ‘ERGO’ package provides the same operations inside a Common Lisp image; the loading operations load the systems into the current image, like ‘ql:quickload’.
Designators are given either as strings, in the same syntax as the command line (‘"gitlab:owner/repo@v1.2"’), or as forms: ‘(gitlab "owner/repo" :tag "v1.2")’, ‘(git "https://…/repo.git" :branch "dev")’.