How to use the Find Skills agent skill (find-skills)

What is an agent skill, and what does Find Skills do?

An agent skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file. The file gives an AI agent instructions for a specific task, and the agent loads it when the task comes up. The skill's description tells the agent when to use it.

Find Skills is for capabilities the agent lacks. When you ask for something like "find a skill for X," the agent first checks the skills already installed in its <available_skills> catalog. If nothing fits, it checks skills.sh and searches with the Skills CLI, then compares options before suggesting one.

• It checks skills.sh's leaderboard, which ranks skills by total installs, before running any CLI search.
• It weighs install count, source reputation (for example official organisations such as vercel-labs, anthropics and microsoft), and GitHub stars of the source repo.
• It presents one option and asks whether to install it. It installs only after you confirm.
• It does not list skills you already have. The skill description says to use it only for new capabilities.

Install Find Skills

The source describes two ways to add the skill folder. Download the ZIP from this page and unzip it into one of these locations:

• Personal skills folder: ~/.claude/skills/
• Project skills folder: .claude/skills/ inside your project
• Or, in the Claude apps, go to Settings → Capabilities → Skills and upload the ZIP.

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. Ask in plain language. The skill's own trigger phrases are requests such as "find a skill for X" and "is there a skill that does X". It also fires when you ask how to do a common task that a published skill probably covers, or when you want to extend Horizon's capabilities.

• "Find a skill for reviewing pull requests."
• "Is there a skill that helps with changelogs?"
• "Make my React app faster. Is there a skill for that?"
• "Find a skill for writing API docs."

What happens during a search

The skill maps your request to a search query. For example, "make my React app faster" becomes a search for react performance, and "help with PR reviews" becomes a search for pr review. The source lists common categories with search terms, such as web development (react, nextjs, typescript, css, tailwind), testing (jest, playwright, e2e), DevOps (deploy, docker, kubernetes, ci-cd), documentation (docs, readme, changelog, api-docs), code quality (review, lint, refactor, best-practices) and design (ui, ux, design-system, accessibility).

• Search command used by the skill: npx --yes skills find <query>
• If npx is unavailable, the search fails and the agent falls back to browsing skills.sh manually and pasting SKILL.md content.

Install a skill after you approve it

The source describes two install routes. The first works without Node.js: the agent writes the SKILL.md content to .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md and then reloads the skill catalog. The second uses npx to install from a repository. The skill checks for npx first with which npx. Skill names must match the name: field in the SKILL.md frontmatter, or the skill is skipped.

After either route, the agent runs a reload so the new skill appears in the catalog on the next turn. The source says the agent then confirms that the skill is installed.

• Option A (no Node.js needed): write SKILL.md to .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, then reload.
• Option B (requires Node.js): install with npx --yes skills add <owner/repo>@<skill-name> -y, then reload.
• The @<skill> suffix selects one skill from a multi-skill repo. Leave it out to take the whole repo.

Safety notes: scripts and network access

Find Skills runs scripts and uses the network. It calls npx to reach the Skills CLI package registry and reads skills.sh. The skill itself depends on popularity signals, which the source notes can be gamed or misleading. Review any skill before you rely on it, and read the SKILL.md of a new skill before installing it.

The source also says that skills installed through the CLI can include scripts/ subdirectories. Treat a skill from an unknown author with the same caution you would give any downloaded code.

• Requires network access to skills.sh and the Skills CLI package registry.
• Do not install skills from unknown sources without review.
• Install counts and star counts are trust signals, not proof of quality.

Tips for getting good results

Name the task specifically. Searching for "react performance" finds more relevant results than "help with code". Check the leaderboard yourself if you want to see popular options before asking the agent. If nothing fits, ask the agent to help directly, or to write a custom skill with npx --yes skills init my-skill-name.

• Use specific task words in your request.
• Check the source repo and author before approving an install.
• If no skill is found, the agent can help directly or draft a custom SKILL.md.