JackIn 0.1.2

jack-in

A small .NET 8 CLI that makes the landing-page animation real: it downloads version-aware .NET Claude skills from the public DevNines/dotnet-skills repo and loads them into your agent — either user-wide or into the current project only.

$ jack-in load Ardalis.Specification@9.3.1
↳ negotiating construct · DevNines/dotnet-skills@main
↳ extracting api surface
  · ardalis-spec: exact reference v9.3.1 · grounded, no invented methods
↳ uploading to agent · user → C:\Users\you\.claude\skills
  ✓ ardalis-spec
status: LOADED (1 skill)
↳ cleaning up · zip + extracted folder

How it works

1. Downloads the source repo as a zip to a temp folder (%TEMP%/jack-in-*).
2. Extracts it and finds every folder containing a SKILL.md (under skills/ when present).
3. Resolves your target — by folder name (ardalis-spec), package id (Ardalis.Specification), or any detect_package_names entry from the skill's skill.config.json.
4. Copies the whole skill folder to the target (see version handling below).
5. Always deletes the zip and the extracted folder when finished — even on failure.

Where skills are installed

--user-dir <path> overrides the user-level directory (handy for testing).

Commands

jack-in load <package|skill>[@version]   # load one skill
jack-in load all                         # load every skill in the source repo
jack-in list                             # list available skills + their versions
jack-in help                             # full help

Options

Version handling (@version)

These skills are version-aware at runtime — when engaged, the skill reads your .csproj / Directory.Packages.props and self-selects the matching reference files. So jack-in copies the entire skill folder (all versions). The @version you pass is validated and reported against the skill's reference/api-surface-v*.md files using the same closest-match rules the skills use (exact → same minor, highest patch → same major, highest minor ≤ requested). It never changes which files are copied. A version with no safe reference data still installs, with a warning.

Install

Once published to NuGet.org, install it as a .NET global tool — one command, any machine with the .NET 8 SDK:

dotnet tool install --global JackIn
jack-in load all

# later
dotnet tool update --global JackIn
dotnet tool uninstall --global JackIn

Requires the .NET SDK (8.0+). If jack-in isn't found after install, make sure ~/.dotnet/tools is on your PATH.

Releasing (maintainers)

Publishing is automated by .github/workflows/publish-jackin.yml. One-time setup: add a NuGet.org API key as the NUGET_API_KEY repository secret. Then cut a release by pushing a tag — the version comes from the tag:

git tag jack-in-v0.1.0
git push origin jack-in-v0.1.0

(Or run the Publish jack-in workflow manually from the Actions tab and type the version.)

Run / build from source

# Run without installing
dotnet run --project src/JackIn -- load Ardalis.Specification@9.3.1
dotnet run --project src/JackIn -- list

# Build
dotnet build src/JackIn/JackIn.csproj -c Release

# Pack + install from a local .nupkg (no NuGet.org needed)
dotnet pack src/JackIn/JackIn.csproj -c Release -o ./artifacts
dotnet tool install --global --add-source ./artifacts JackIn

Examples

jack-in load Ardalis.Specification@9.3.1     # → user-level skills dir
jack-in load ardalis-spec --project          # → ./.claude/skills (this project only)
jack-in load all                             # every skill, user-level
jack-in load hangfire --force                # reinstall, overwriting
jack-in list                                 # what's available + versions