skillz 0.3.0

skills

A CLI for managing AI agent skills.

Skills are markdown files (SKILL.md) with YAML frontmatter that teach AI coding agents how to do something. The CLI installs them from GitHub, GitLab, generic Git repos, or local paths - into whichever agents you have on your machine.

Install

The default NuGet package and command are skills. The skills package is published as an equivalent package alias, and it installs the same skills command.

Run without installing (dnx)

If you have the .NET 10 SDK (or newer), dnx runs the tool one-shot - no PATH shim, no global state:

dnx skills add chillicream/agent-skills

dnx is a shell script that ships with the SDK; it forwards to dotnet tool exec, which downloads the package into the NuGet cache and runs it. Subsequent runs hit the cache and are immediate.

First run prompts:

Tool package skills@1.0.0 will be downloaded from source
https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json. Proceed? [y/n] (y):

Pass --yes to skip the prompt (useful in CI):

dnx --yes skills add anthropics/skills

Pin a version with @:

dnx skills@1.0.0 add anthropics/skills
dnx skills@1.* add anthropics/skills      # latest 1.x

Allow prereleases:

dnx --prerelease skills add anthropics/skills

Use a custom feed:

dnx --source https://my.feed/v3/index.json skills add ...

If a .config/dotnet-tools.json manifest is in scope, dnx uses the version pinned there instead of the latest - handy for repo-local tool versions.

dnx skills and dotnet tool exec skills are equivalent; dnx is just the shorter form.

Persistent install

To put skills on your PATH for repeated use:

dotnet tool install -g skills

Requires the .NET SDK (8.0 or newer).

Quick start

# Install all skills from a GitHub repo into Claude Code
dnx skills add chillicream/agent-skills --agent claude-code

# Pick specific skills interactively
dnx skills add chillicream/agent-skills

# Install one skill into multiple agents
dnx skills add chillicream/agent-skills --skill code-review --agent claude-code --agent cursor

# Install everything into every detected agent, no prompts
dnx skills add chillicream/agent-skills --all

# List what's installed
dnx skills list

# Update installed skills to the latest version
dnx skills update

# Remove a skill
dnx skills remove code-review

# Scaffold a new skill
dnx skills init my-skill

Sources

skills add <source> understands several source forms:

By default, the CLI performs a shallow clone for speed. Pass --full-depth to clone full history.

Scope: project vs. global

Without --global, skills are added to the current project (recorded in skills-lock.json in the working directory). With --global, they're installed once for your user under your XDG data dir ($XDG_DATA_HOME/skills or ~/.local/share/skills), with the global lock file (.skill-lock.json) kept alongside the installed skills in that same directory.

Agents

skills supports 55+ AI coding agents - Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Continue, Gemini CLI, and many more. Detection is automatic; the --agent <name> flag (repeatable) targets specific ones. Run skills list after install to see which agents on your machine were updated.

By default skills are symlinked from a canonical location so editing one place updates every agent. Pass --copy to copy files instead - useful for sandboxed agents that don't follow symlinks.

Authoring a skill

skills init my-skill

…creates my-skill/SKILL.md with the right frontmatter shape:

---
name: my-skill
description: A brief description of what this skill does
---

# my-skill

Instructions for the agent to follow when this skill is activated.

Push the file to a public repo and anyone can install it with skills add <owner>/<repo>.

Commands

Common flags: --global / -g, --agent / -a <name>, --skill / -s <name>, --yes / -y, --all, --copy, --full-depth, --list / -l, --json.

skills <command> --help shows the full option list for each command.

Source code

https://github.com/chillicream/skills

License

MIT - see LICENSE.