The commands
Seven, and you will mostly use the first two.
npx skills add <source> — install a skill and wire it into your agents. npx skills use <source> — run one skill without installing it. It writes the files to a temp directory and prints the generated prompt, so npx skills use owner/repo@skill-name | claude works as a one-off. Add --agent claude-code to launch an agent interactively instead. npx skills list (alias ls) — what is installed, project and global. npx skills find [query] — search for skills, interactively or by keyword. npx skills update [skills] — pull the latest version of what you installed. npx skills remove [skills] — take them back out of your agents. npx skills init [name] — scaffold a new SKILL.md to write your own.
Where a skill can come from
The source argument is deliberately loose. All of these resolve:
- GitHub shorthand —
owner/repo, the common case. - A full URL, or a path straight to one skill inside a repo.
- GitLab, or any git URL, including SSH.
- A local path such as
./my-local-skills, which is how you test one you are writing. - Private repositories, using the git credentials you already have. The CLI tries normal git auth first, then GitHub CLI, then SSH.
- A direct download URL pointing at a
SKILL.md or a zip/tar archive.
Where the files land
Two scopes, and the default is the one you usually want:
- Project (default) —
./<agent>/skills/, committed with the repo so your team gets the same skills. - Global (
-g) — ~/<agent>/skills/, available in every project you open.
When several agents are installed it symlinks each of them to one canonical copy, so updating a skill updates it everywhere. Pass --copy if your environment cannot follow symlinks.
Useful flags: -a to target specific agents, -s to pick specific skills ('*' for all), -l to list what is in a repo without installing, and -y to skip prompts in CI.
A real one to try it on
Reading about a CLI is less useful than running it. Ours publishes whatever your agent just
built to a private URL a person can open, which is a task most agents cannot do at all:
npx skills add stevysmith/stacktree-skill
Then tell your agent “publish this and give me the link”. It returns an
unguessable URL that opens in any browser with no account for the reader. Full disclosure:
Stacktree is our product, and the rest of this page is about our own skills. The CLI above is
not ours — it works exactly the same with any repo.