Sometimes you just want a local copy of a git repo, not a full clone with git history. This can be useful when wanting to start your project from a template repo or include another repo in your existing git project. Degit by Rich Harris lets you do this.
You can run degit without installing. For example, to create a copy of the getzola/book theme within the themes folder of an existing Zola project:
npx degit getzola/book book
Would create a new directory called book containing a copy of latest version of the getzola/book repo.
You can also just grab a portion of an existing repo instead of a full copy:
degit user/repo/subdirectory
There is also a degit Rust clone which has the benefit of not requiring node and can be installed as a single binary.
For Rustaceans:
cargo install degit
Or grab the latest binary from the Release tab of the project and add it to your path.