Skills Manager

Before doing anything

1. Confirm the CLI is available: command -v skills-manager-cli. If it's not on PATH, this skill doesn't apply — fall back to find-skills (or tell the user to install skills-manager).
2. Always pass --json when you parse output yourself. Pretty-printed output is for the user; JSON is for you. Errors come back as {"ok": false, "error": "..."} on stderr with a non-zero exit code.

skills-manager-cli --json skills list

Mental model

There's one central library at ~/.skills-manager/skills/ that all agents share. Each skill in the library has metadata in a SQLite DB (source URL, preset membership, tags, enabled flag). A preset is a named group of skills. The active preset gets synced out to every enabled agent's skill directory (~/.claude/skills/, ~/.cursor/skills/, etc.) by symlink or copy.

So the lifecycle is: install → (in library) → add to preset → sync → (visible to agent). install --sync is the shortcut that does all three.

Internally, presets are still stored as scenarios for backward-compatible Git Backup. The CLI and UI call them presets.

Install

# From skills.sh marketplace
skills-manager-cli skills install vercel-labs/agent-skills@react-best-practices

# Any git URL (use /tree/branch/subpath form when the skill lives in a sub-directory)
skills-manager-cli skills install https://github.com/anthropics/skills.git
skills-manager-cli skills install https://github.com/foo/bar/tree/main/skills/baz

# Local folder
skills-manager-cli skills install ./my-skill

# Force a source type when the ref is ambiguous
skills-manager-cli skills install foo/bar --skillssh
skills-manager-cli skills install ./looks-like/owner-repo --local

Default is library-only — the skill enters the DB but doesn't appear in any agent yet. To make it visible:

• --sync → add to the current active preset + sync to every enabled agent (most common, do this unless the user signals otherwise)
• --sync-preset <name> → add to a specific preset + sync
• Or later: presets add-skill <preset> <skill> followed by skills sync

Ref resolution is deterministic, no path-existence guessing:

1. Starts with ./, ../, /, or ~/ → local path
2. Contains ://, ends in .git, or starts with git@ → git URL
3. Matches owner/repo, owner/repo/skill, or owner/repo@skill → skillssh
4. Otherwise → error; pass --local / --git / --skillssh to disambiguate

Always verify after install with skills list or skills show <name> so you can confirm the skill landed and report the preset / sync state back to the user.

Search

skills-manager-cli --json skills search "react performance" --limit 5

Each result has install_ref (paste straight into skills install), installs (popularity proxy), and skills_sh_url. Show the top 1–3 with install counts before installing — anything with 10K+ installs is battle-tested; anything under 100 needs a careful look at the source repo.

Update / Check

# Re-fetch one skill (git/skillssh re-clones, local/import re-imports source dir)
skills-manager-cli skills update <skill-name-or-id>

# Re-fetch all eligible skills
skills-manager-cli skills update --all

# Just probe remote revisions, don't touch files
skills-manager-cli skills check --all

check is the dry-run partner of update. Local-only skills (no git source) are reported as skipped: true.

Remove

# Always preview first when removing more than one
skills-manager-cli skills remove <skill> --dry-run

# --yes is required for the actual delete; --json mode does NOT auto-confirm
skills-manager-cli skills remove <skill> --yes

Remove deletes the central-library copy, all synced targets across agents, and the DB row. It's not reversible without re-installing.

Enable / Disable

skills-manager-cli skills disable <skill>   # skipped by future syncs
skills-manager-cli skills enable <skill>

Disable is a "soft remove" — it stops the skill from being written into agent directories on future syncs, but does not purge already-synced copies. If the user wants the skill gone from agents now, follow up with skills remove or re-sync (the disabled skill will be cleaned up on the next sync of its preset).

Sync

# Sync current active preset to all enabled agents
skills-manager-cli skills sync

# Preview the target list — safe, no writes
skills-manager-cli skills sync --dry-run

# Switch active preset, then sync
skills-manager-cli skills sync --preset "Web Dev"

# Only sync to a single agent (useful when one agent's directory got out of sync)
skills-manager-cli skills sync --tool claude_code

Adopt skills installed elsewhere

When skills already live in an agent's directory (e.g. installed via npx skills add or manual git clone) but aren't in the central library, pull them in:

# Dry-run scan first — lists candidates without writing
skills-manager-cli skills adopt ~/.claude/skills --dry-run

# Adopt everything found — each becomes source_type=local (can't auto-update from git)
skills-manager-cli skills adopt ~/.claude/skills

# Adopt a single skill and pin it to a git source so `update` works later
skills-manager-cli skills adopt ~/.claude/skills/react-best-practices \
  --git-url https://github.com/vercel-labs/agent-skills/tree/main/react-best-practices

# Or pass --git-subpath explicitly when the URL is just the repo root
skills-manager-cli skills adopt ~/.claude/skills/react-best-practices \
  --git-url https://github.com/vercel-labs/agent-skills \
  --git-subpath react-best-practices

# Skill lives at the repo root? Pass an empty subpath
skills-manager-cli skills adopt ~/.claude/skills/my-skill \
  --git-url https://github.com/me/my-skill --git-subpath ""

adopt auto-excludes anything already in the DB or already a sync target, so it's safe to re-run. --git-url requires either a URL with a subpath (/tree/branch/path) or an explicit --git-subpath — without that, future update would re-clone the wrong directory, so the CLI refuses to guess.

Tag

skills-manager-cli skills tag add <skill> web frontend
skills-manager-cli skills tag remove <skill> frontend
skills-manager-cli skills tag list <skill>   # tags on one skill
skills-manager-cli skills tag list           # all distinct tags

Presets

skills-manager-cli presets list
skills-manager-cli presets current

skills-manager-cli presets add-skill <preset> <skill>...
skills-manager-cli presets remove-skill <preset> <skill>...

skills-manager-cli presets apply <preset>   # makes it active + syncs

Use presets add-skill when you want to put an already-installed skill into a different preset without re-installing it, or to share a skill across multiple presets.

Health check

When sync misbehaves or a command errors in a confusing way:

skills-manager-cli --json repo status   # base dir, skill / preset counts, active preset
skills-manager-cli --json tools list    # detected agents and their target paths

These two are read-only and great for diagnosing "why isn't this skill showing up in Cursor" type questions.

Typical workflows

"Find me a skill for X" / "Install a skill that does X"

1. skills search "X" --limit 5 — show the top 1–3 hits with install counts and source.
2. If a clear winner: skills install <install_ref> --sync.
3. If ambiguous: ask the user to pick.
4. skills list (or skills show <name>) to confirm it landed in the active preset and synced.

"What skills do I have?"

skills-manager-cli --json skills list

The enabled, presets, and source_type fields are usually the most informative to summarize back.

"Pull in the skills already installed in my agent directories"

1. skills adopt ~/.claude/skills --dry-run (and any other agent dirs the user mentions) — show the candidate list.
2. After user confirms: skills adopt ~/.claude/skills.
3. For any adopted skill where the user knows the original repo, follow up with skills adopt ... --git-url ... --git-subpath ... to restore the update link.

"Update everything"

skills-manager-cli skills check --all     # see what has upstream changes
skills-manager-cli skills update --all    # apply

Report which skills actually refreshed (refreshed: true in the JSON) vs which were already up-to-date.

Pitfalls

• No active preset → skills sync (without --preset) fails. Show the user presets list and pick one with them, or use sync --preset <name>.
• Install succeeded but skill doesn't appear in the agent → install defaults to library-only. Re-run with --sync, or add it to the active preset and sync.
• Adopted skills can't be updated from git → npx skills add and manual git clone don't leave source metadata, so adopt has to treat them as local. Fix per-skill with adopt ... --git-url ... --git-subpath ..., or just skills remove + skills install <git-ref> to start clean with a real source.
• --dry-run only exists on remove, sync, adopt. For install / update / check, the preview is a different command (search before install, check before update).