How to use the Manage Skills Library agent skill

What the manage-skills skill makes the agent do

An agent skill is a folder of instructions, with a SKILL.md file at its core, that an AI agent loads when a task matches it. This skill covers a specific job: looking after the user's shared skill library. It can install, update and remove skills, deploy or undeploy them for particular agents, manage presets, organize tags, search for skills and adopt skills that already exist on disk.

The library lives in one central place, ~/.skills-manager/skills/, and all agents share it. Instead of copying files by hand, the agent runs the Skills Manager command-line tool, so the library records where each skill came from, which presets it belongs to and which agents it is deployed to.

• Install, update or remove a skill in the central library
• Deploy or undeploy a skill for a specific agent
• Add skills to or remove them from presets
• Organize tags, search for skills and check what is installed or deployed
• Adopt skills that already exist in an agent folder

Install the manage-skills skill

Download the ZIP of the skill from this page and unzip it. For a personal setup, place the folder in ~/.claude/skills/. For a single project, place it in that project's .claude/skills/ folder.

If you use the Claude apps instead, open Settings, go to Capabilities, then Skills, and upload the skill there.

• Personal install: unzip into ~/.claude/skills/
• Project install: unzip into the project's .claude/skills/ folder
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload

Set up Skills Manager or its CLI

The skill does nothing useful without Skills Manager. You need either the Skills Manager desktop app or the skills-manager-cli binary. The skill also needs network access to Git hosts or the skills.sh marketplace for installs and updates.

Before doing anything, the skill resolves the CLI. On a machine with the desktop app, it uses the copy the app published under ~/.skills-manager/bin, which is only trusted after the app has verified it. If that copy is present but incomplete, the skill stops and asks you to open the Skills Manager app once so it can republish the CLI. On a CLI-only machine, it uses the command found on your PATH. If nothing is found, the skill does not apply and you should install Skills Manager.

Ask for skill changes in plain language

You do not need to remember command syntax. Describe the result you want, and the skill's description tells the agent to use it whenever you want an agent to gain or lose a skill, reorganize the central library, or ask what is installed or deployed.

The skill is designed to be preferred over copying folders into an agent directory yourself, because Skills Manager keeps source metadata, preset membership, updates and cross-agent deployment state in step.

• Add a skill for Claude Code and Codex from the library
• Remove a skill I no longer use, but show me what would be deleted first
• Turn on my writing preset for Cursor
• What skills are installed and which agents see them?
• Find a React performance skill and show me the top three options before installing

Install, deploy and verify a skill

An install adds the skill to the library but does not show it to any agent yet. The skill prefers a separate deployment step so the scope is clear. After installing, it checks the result with a list or show command so it can report back the preset and sync state.

Install sources can be the skills.sh marketplace, any Git URL, or a local folder. Ref resolution is deterministic: a ref starting with ./, ../, / or ~/ is a local path, a ref containing ://, ending in .git or starting with git@ is a Git URL, and a ref shaped like owner/repo, owner/repo/skill or owner/repo@skill goes to skills.sh. Anything else is an error until you add --local, --git or --skillssh.

• Use --skillssh, --local or --git to force a source type when the ref is ambiguous
• Use --json whenever the agent parses output

Update, check and remove skills safely

The check command compares skills without changing files, and update re-fetches them. An update replaces a skill's directory wholesale. If the new version would drop files you added inside that folder, the CLI applies nothing and lists the paths instead. Show those paths to the user and ask before going further. Only the desktop app can confirm such an update; there is no CLI flag to override it.

Removal is also guarded. Preview with --dry-run first, and note that --yes is required for the actual delete, even in JSON mode. If a deployment would overwrite something that is not managed by Skills Manager, the deploy is refused and nothing at those paths is deleted. You can then adopt that folder into the library or move it aside and retry.

• Run skills check --all to see what would change without touching files
• Run skills remove <skill> --dry-run before removing
• Warn that an update can silently overwrite edits to files the new version also ships

Safety notes: scripts, network and untrusted skills

This skill runs scripts and uses the network. Installs and updates fetch code from Git hosts or the skills.sh marketplace. Installed skills can instruct the agent to do things, so only install skills from sources you trust, and review the source repository of any skill with a small install count before adding it.

The skill is not for machines without Skills Manager or its CLI, because it stops and does nothing useful there. If you only use one agent with a few skills, copying the skill folder by hand is simpler.

• Install only from sources you trust
• Check the source repo of unfamiliar skills before deploying them
• Keep backups of any local edits inside skill folders before updating