agent-skills
Production-grade engineering skills for AI coding agents.
Install / Use
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skillsInstalls into whichever agent you are using.
CLAUDE.md
Claude Code project instructions
Quality Score
Category
Development & EngineeringSupported Platforms
Tags
Our assessment of agent-skills
agent-skills scores 93/100 on our quality scale, 524th of 4,611 Development & Engineering skills we index (top 12%).
Its CLAUDE.md is 24 KB long, well organised into 21 sections with 12 code examples: a thorough specification that gives an agent plenty to work with.
With 113,539 GitHub stars, it is one of the more widely adopted skills in the catalogue.
Maintenance, license and trust
- The repository was last updated 4 days ago, so agent-skills is actively maintained.
- Our last check on 2026-10-17 found the source still online.
- It is released under the MIT license, a permissive license that allows use, modification and commercial use with attribution.
- Its trust signals score 95/100, with 1 caution from licensing, adoption, age or documentation. These come from repository metadata, not a code audit — read the skill file before letting an agent act on it.
Safety scan
No issues foundOur scan of the whole file found no instruction hijacking, hidden characters, credential access, data exfiltration or destructive commands. An AI review of the same text found nothing harmful.
AI review by kimi-k2.7-code on 2026-09-24. Automated pattern scan on 2026-09-24. It catches known dangerous patterns, not every risk — read a skill before letting an agent act on it.
agent-skills compared with similar skills
All 4 of these similar skills score higher than agent-skills; compare them before choosing.
| Skill | Score | Stars | Updated | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| agent-skills (this skill)by addyosmani | 93 | 113.5k | 4d ago | CLAUDE.md |
| claude-memby thedotmack | 100 | 113.6k | today | CLAUDE.md |
| taste-skillby Leonxlnx | 100 | 110.8k | 1d ago | CLAUDE.md |
| Agent-Reachby Panniantong | 100 | 109.3k | today | CLAUDE.md |
| Understand-Anythingby Egonex-AI | 100 | 91.0k | 11d ago | CLAUDE.md |
Frequently asked questions
- How do I install agent-skills?
- Run
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills. The install tabs above show the steps for each supported agent. - Which AI agents does agent-skills work with?
- It is written for Claude Code, Cursor and OpenAI Codex, as a CLAUDE.md file. Other agents that read the same format can often use it too.
- Is agent-skills safe to use?
- Our scan of the whole file found no instruction hijacking, hidden characters, credential access, data exfiltration or destructive commands. An AI review of the same text found nothing harmful. It is MIT-licensed and scores 95/100 on trust signals. Skills are instructions an agent will follow, so read the file before installing it and do not approve commands you do not understand.
- Is agent-skills still maintained?
- The repository was last updated 4 days ago, so agent-skills is actively maintained.
Skill content
View source on GitHubAgent Skills
Production-grade engineering skills for AI coding agents.
Skills encode the workflows, quality gates, and best practices that senior engineers use when building software. These ones are packaged so AI agents follow them consistently across every phase of development.
<a href="https://trendshift.io/repositories/25200" target="_blank"><img src="https://trendshift.io/api/badge/repositories/25200" alt="addyosmani%2Fagent-skills | Trendshift" style="width: 250px; height: 55px;" width="250" height="55"/></a>

DEFINE PLAN BUILD VERIFY REVIEW SHIP
┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
│ Idea │ ───▶ │ Spec │ ───▶ │ Code │ ───▶ │ Test │ ───▶ │ QA │ ───▶ │ Go │
│Refine│ │ PRD │ │ Impl │ │Debug │ │ Gate │ │ Live │
└──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘
/spec /plan /build /test /review /ship
Commands
9 slash commands that map to the development lifecycle. Each one activates the right skills automatically.
| What you're doing | Command | Key principle |
|-------------------|---------|---------------|
| Define what to build | /spec | Spec before code |
| Plan how to build it | /plan | Small, atomic tasks |
| Build incrementally | /build | One slice at a time |
| Prove it works | /test | Tests are proof |
| Set the quality bar | /constraints | Decide it once, enforce it everywhere |
| Review before merge | /review | Improve code health |
| Audit web performance | /webperf | Measure before you optimize |
| Simplify the code | /code-simplify | Clarity over cleverness |
| Ship to production | /ship | Faster is safer |
Want fewer manual steps once the spec exists? /build auto generates the plan and implements every task in a single approved pass — you approve the plan once, then it runs autonomously. It removes the human stepping between tasks, not the verification: every task is still test-driven and committed individually, and it pauses on failures or risky steps.
Skills also activate automatically based on what you're doing — designing an API triggers api-and-interface-design, building UI triggers frontend-ui-engineering, and so on.
Quick Start
Fastest path — any agent, one command. The open skills CLI installs into 70+ agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Cline, and more):
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills # install all 25 skills
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --list # browse before installing
Or grab individual skills:
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --skill code-review-and-quality # five-axis review before merge
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --skill interview-me # requirements interrogation, one question at a time
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --skill test-driven-development # red-green-refactor, enforced
Installing one skill? A per-skill
npxinstall copies onlyskills/<name>/, not the repo-levelreferences/directory. The skill still works, but paths to supplementary shared checklists are unavailable. Use a whole-repo integration, clone the repository, or copy the needed checklist into areferences/directory inside the installed skill. This portability gap is tracked in #361.
Prefer a native integration? Pick your tool below.
<details> <summary><b>Claude Code (recommended)</b></summary>Marketplace install:
/plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills
/plugin install agent-skills@addy-agent-skills
SSH errors? The marketplace clones repos via SSH. If you don't have SSH keys set up on GitHub, either add your SSH key or use the full HTTPS URL to force HTTPS cloning during the marketplace-add step:
/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.git /plugin install agent-skills@addy-agent-skillsIf
/plugin installstill fails withgit@github.com: Permission denied (publickey)on Windows or macOS, the recommended workaround is to configure Git once to rewrite GitHub SSH URLs to HTTPS for subprocess clones:git config --global url."https://github.com/".insteadOf git@github.com:
Local / development:
git clone https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.git
claude --plugin-dir /path/to/agent-skills
</details>
<details>
<summary><b>Cursor</b></summary>
Put workflow skills under .cursor/skills/ (sync from agent-skills/skills/) and short policies in .cursor/rules/*.mdc — do not paste full skills into rules. See docs/cursor-setup.md.
Install as a native plugin for skills and subagents. In affected Antigravity CLI releases, legacy command TOMLs are reported as converted but their wrapper commands are not discoverable; invoke the underlying namespaced skills directly. See docs/antigravity-setup.md.
Install from the repo:
agy plugin install https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.git
Install from a local clone:
git clone https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.git
agy plugin install ./agent-skills
</details>
<details>
<summary><b>Gemini CLI</b></summary>
Install as native skills for auto-discovery, or add to GEMINI.md for persistent context. See docs/gemini-cli-setup.md.
Install from the repo:
gemini skills install https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.git --path skills
Install from a local clone:
gemini skills install ./agent-skills/skills/
</details>
<details>
<summary><b>Windsurf</b></summary>
Add skill contents to your Windsurf rules configuration. See docs/windsurf-setup.md.
</details> <details> <summary><b>OpenCode</b></summary>Copy skills to .opencode/skills/ (or ~/.config/opencode/skills/), add a project-local AGENTS.md, and use the built-in skill tool for agent-driven execution. Optional slash commands can be added under .opencode/commands/.
Use agent definitions from agents/ as Copilot personas and skill content in .github/copilot-instructions.md. See docs/copilot-setup.md.
Using the standalone copilot CLI? Install it as a plugin — see docs/copilot-cli-setup.md.
Install as a native Codex plugin (Codex CLI v0.122+):
codex plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills
codex plugin add agent-skills@agent-skills
The first command registers the marketplace; the second installs the plugin. Codex reads the root skills/ directory directly through .codex-plugin/plugin.json. Once installed, invoke skills in chat using @ (e.g., @spec-driven-development). See docs/codex-setup.md for local installation and troubleshooting.
Install natively with the built-in cmd skills command. Command Code clones the repo, discovers every SKILL.md, and installs into .commandcode/skills/:
cmd skills add addyosmani/agent-skills # pick skills to install (project)
cmd skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --global # install for all projects (~/.commandcode/skills/)
cmd skills add addyosmani/agent-skills -s spec-driven-development # install a specific skill
Installed skills show up in the TUI slash menu, e.g. /spec-driven-development. See docs/commandcode-setup.md.
Skills are plain Markdown - they work with any agent that accepts system prompts or instruction files. See docs/getting-started.md.
</details>Adoption
Already installed? How you roll the pack out depends on your codebase. The Adoption Guide covers two paths: the full lifecycle from day one for a greenfield project, or an incremental, verification-first rollout for an established codebase.
All 25 Skills
The commands above are entry points. The pack includes 25 skills total — 24 lifecycle skills plus the using-agent-skills meta-skill. Each skill is a structured workflow with steps, verification gates, and anti-rationalization tables. You can also reference any skill directly.
Meta - Discover which skill applies
| Skill | What It Does | Use When | |-------|-------------|----------| | using-agent-skills | Maps incoming work to the right skill workflow and defines shared operating rules | Starting a session or deciding which skill applies |
Define - Clarify what to build
| Skill | What It Does | Use When | |-------|-------------|----------| | interview-me | One-question-at-a-time interview that extracts what the user actually wants instead of what they think they should want, until ~95% confidence | The ask is underspecified, or the user invokes "interview me" / "grill me" | | idea-refine | Structured divergent/convergent thinking to turn vague ideas into concrete proposals | You have a rough concept that needs exploration | | spec-driven-development | Write a PRD covering objectives, commands, structure, code style, testing, and boundaries before any code | Starting a new project, feature, or significant change | | constraint-driven-development | Interviews you for a quality bar with sane default thresholds, writes CONSTRAINTS.md, places each check by cost, and catches agents silencing checks or skipping tests to get green | No standards are written down, or an agent is producing more than anyone reads |
Plan - Break it down
| Skill | What It Does | Use When | |-------|-------------|----------| | planning-and-task-breakdown | Decompose specs into small, verifiable tasks with acceptance criteria and dependency ordering | You have a spec and need implementable units |
Build - Write the code
| Skill | What It Does | Use When | |-------|-------------|----------| | incremental-implementation | Thin vertical slices - implement, test, verify, commit. Feature flags, safe defaults, rollback-friendly changes | Any change touching more than one file | | test-driven-development | Red-Green-Refactor, test pyramid (80/15/5), test sizes, DAMP over DRY, Beyonce Rule, browser testing | Implementing logic, fixing bugs, or changing behavior | | context-engineering | Feed agents the right information at the right time - rules files, context packing, MCP integrations | Starting a session, switching tasks, or when output quality drops | | source-driven-development | Ground every framework decision in official documentation - verify, cite s
Truncated for display — read the full file on GitHub.
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Languages
Trust signals
From repository metadata: license, adoption, age and documentation. Not a code audit — see the Safety scan above for what the skill file itself contains.
