Manage Skills

Manage AI Agent Skills

You can manage skills and rules for all major AI coding tools directly from the terminal. This skill teaches you the directory layout, file format, and operations for each tool.

Supported Tools & Paths

Directory-based tools (multiple skills)

Each skill lives in its own subdirectory with a SKILL.md file containing YAML frontmatter.

Single-file tools (one config file)

Cursor plugins (read-only)

Plugin skills are cached at ~/.cursor/plugins/cache/<org>/<plugin>/<version>/skills/<name>/SKILL.md. These are managed by Cursor and should not be edited directly.

Skill File Format

For directory-based tools (Agents, Cursor, Claude), skills use YAML frontmatter:

markdownCopy code
---
name: skill-name
description: Brief description of what this skill does
---

# Skill Name

Skill instructions go here. The AI agent reads this content
when the skill is activated.

For Windsurf, Cline, Continue, and Roo Code, skills are plain .md files (frontmatter optional).

Operations

List all skills

bashCopy code
# List skills for a specific tool
ls ~/.agents/skills/
ls ~/.cursor/skills/
ls ~/.claude/skills/
ls ~/.windsurf/rules/
ls ~/.cline/rules/
ls ~/.continue/rules/
ls ~/.roo/rules/

# Count total skills across all tools
echo "Agents: $(ls ~/.agents/skills/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
echo "Cursor: $(ls ~/.cursor/skills/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
echo "Claude: $(ls ~/.claude/skills/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
echo "Windsurf: $(ls ~/.windsurf/rules/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
echo "Cline: $(ls ~/.cline/rules/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
echo "Continue: $(ls ~/.continue/rules/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
echo "Roo: $(ls ~/.roo/rules/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"

# Check single-file tools
test -f ~/.github/copilot-instructions.md && echo "Copilot: exists" || echo "Copilot: not found"
test -f ~/.codex/AGENTS.md && echo "Codex: exists" || echo "Codex: not found"
test -f ~/.aider.conf.yml && echo "Aider: exists" || echo "Aider: not found"
test -f ~/augment-guidelines.md && echo "Augment: exists" || echo "Augment: not found"

Read a skill

bashCopy code
cat ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md

Create a new skill

bashCopy code
# For Agents/Cursor/Claude (SKILL.md format)
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills/my-new-skill
cat > ~/.agents/skills/my-new-skill/SKILL.md << 'EOF'
---
name: my-new-skill
description: What this skill does
---

# My New Skill

Instructions for the agent go here.
EOF

# For Windsurf/Cline/Continue/Roo (plain .md format)
mkdir -p ~/.windsurf/rules/my-new-rule
cat > ~/.windsurf/rules/my-new-rule/my-new-rule.md << 'EOF'
# My New Rule

Instructions go here.
EOF

# For single-file tools
cat > .github/copilot-instructions.md << 'EOF'
Instructions for Copilot go here.
EOF

Enable / Disable a skill

Disabling renames the file to .disabled so the tool ignores it but the content is preserved:

bashCopy code
# Disable
mv ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md.disabled

# Enable
mv ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md.disabled ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md

Copy a skill between tools

bashCopy code
# Copy from Cursor to Claude
cp -r ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill ~/.claude/skills/my-skill

# Copy from Agents to Windsurf (adapt format)
mkdir -p ~/.windsurf/rules/my-skill
cp ~/.agents/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md ~/.windsurf/rules/my-skill/my-skill.md

Move a skill

bashCopy code
mv ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill ~/.agents/skills/my-skill

Delete a skill

bashCopy code
rm -rf ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill

Copy a skill from global to project scope

bashCopy code
cp -r ~/.cursor/skills/my-skill .cursor/skills/my-skill

Search across all skills

bashCopy code
# Search by name
find ~/.agents/skills ~/.cursor/skills ~/.claude/skills ~/.windsurf/rules ~/.cline/rules ~/.continue/rules ~/.roo/rules -maxdepth 1 -type d 2>/dev/null | sort

# Search by content
grep -rl "search term" ~/.agents/skills/ ~/.cursor/skills/ ~/.claude/skills/ 2>/dev/null

Find disabled skills

bashCopy code
find ~/.agents/skills ~/.cursor/skills ~/.claude/skills -name "*.disabled" 2>/dev/null

Guidelines

• When the user asks to "manage skills", "list my skills", "create a skill", "copy a skill to X", or similar, use the paths and formats above.
• Always confirm before deleting skills.
• When copying between tools with different formats (e.g., Cursor SKILL.md to Windsurf plain .md), adapt the file naming accordingly.
• Project-scoped skills override global skills of the same name.
• For single-file tools (Copilot, Codex, Aider, Augment), editing means replacing the entire file content.
• When creating skills, use kebab-case for directory names (e.g., my-new-skill).