> I quite like the npm way of adding --save or --save-dev when installing a package to add it to the package.json file automatically. Composer does not do that, in any way that I could find at least.

You can install individual packages using the `require` command:

    composer require monolog/monolog:*

http://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#require

Oh, thanks very much :)