npx skills CLI

Overview

npx skills (npm package skills@1.4.5, by Vercel Labs) is the package manager for the open agent skills ecosystem. It manages skill installation, discovery, and updates across 40+ AI coding agents. Skills are portable agent instructions — markdown files that teach agents domain-specific knowledge and workflows.

• npm package: skills@1.4.5 (NOT skills-cli)
• Publisher: Vercel Labs
• GitHub: https://github.com/vercel-labs/skills
• Registry/discovery: https://skills.sh/
• Shared specification: agentskills.io

Core Mental Model

Skills Are Portable Agent Instructions

A skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file (and optionally references/ and scripts/). The SKILL.md is a markdown document with YAML frontmatter that teaches an agent how to perform a specific task or work with a specific tool.

Skills are agent-agnostic by design. The same skill can be installed for Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Copilot, and 40+ other AI agents. Each agent has its own installation path, but the skill content is shared.