# skills

> A command-line tool that installs reusable skill files into your coding agents

- Repository: https://github.com/vercel-labs/skills
- Category: Agent skills & plugins
- Stars: 36,165 · Forks: 3,103 · Language: TypeScript · License: MIT
- Experience: Beginner friendly
- Page: https://ir.adyog.com/repos/vercel-labs/skills/

Agent skills are small folders with a SKILL.md file that tells a coding agent how to do a specific job, like writing release notes or opening pull requests the way your team likes. Each agent looks for skills in its own directory, so sharing them by hand gets messy.

This tool, run as npx skills, fetches skills from a GitHub, GitLab or Azure Repos repository, any git URL, a local folder, or a direct download link. It then places them where each chosen agent expects them. By default it keeps one copy and symlinks it into each agent's folder, so updates happen in one place. You can copy files instead if symlinks don't work for you.

It also covers the rest of the lifecycle: listing what is installed, searching for skills, updating, removing, and creating a new SKILL.md template. A separate use command prints a skill as a prompt without installing it. The README lists support for about 80 agents and points to skills.sh for discovering skills.

## What it does

- **Install from many sources**: Accepts GitHub shorthand like owner/repo, full URLs, GitLab, Azure Repos, any git URL, local paths, and direct SKILL.md or archive downloads. Private repositories work through your existing Git, GitHub CLI or SSH credentials.
- **Targets many agents**: Use --agent to install to specific agents such as claude-code or codex, or to all of them. Skills go in the project folder by default, or in your user directory with -g.
- **Symlink or copy**: The default is one canonical copy symlinked into each agent's directory, which makes updates easy. The --copy option makes independent copies instead.
- **Full lifecycle commands**: list, find, update, remove and init let you see installed skills, search by keyword, keep them current, delete them, and scaffold a new SKILL.md.
- **Try a skill without installing**: skills use writes the skill to a temporary directory and prints a prompt you can pipe to an agent, or starts a supported agent with it.

## What you could build

- Install a team's shared skills into Claude Code, Codex and Cursor with a single command.
- Search for a skill by keyword and add it to a project so teammates get it when they clone the repo.
- Write your own skill with the init template and publish it in a git repository for others to install.
- Run a skill once by piping the output of skills use into an agent, without adding files to your project.
- Install skills non-interactively in CI or setup scripts using the -y and -g flags.

## Who it's for

Developers who already use one or more AI coding agents and are comfortable running npx commands; knowing what a SKILL.md file is helps.

## Get started

Run the add command with a repository name, then pick the skills and agents you want from the prompts. Use --list first if you want to see what a repository offers before installing.

```
npx skills add vercel-labs/agent-skills
```
```
npx skills add vercel-labs/agent-skills --list
```

Tags: agent-skills, cli, coding-agents, claude-code, npx