openskills

OpenSkills is a command-line tool that installs and manages "skills" for AI coding assistants. Skills, in this context, are small instruction files (called SKILL.md files) that tell an AI agent how to handle a specific task, like working with PDFs or following a particular Git workflow. Anthropic introduced this format for Claude Code, but OpenSkills extends the same idea so that other AI coding tools, such as Cursor, Windsurf, Aider, and Codex, can also use skills.

The core idea is that AI agents load these skill instructions only when needed, rather than including everything in the conversation upfront. This keeps the agent's working context smaller and more focused. OpenSkills provides a command to install skill packages from GitHub repositories, local folders, or private Git repos, and then writes an AGENTS.md file that lists the available skills in a format any compatible agent can read.

The tool is compatible with Claude Code's existing skill format, meaning you can install skills from Anthropic's own published collection and use them across multiple agent tools simultaneously. It stores skills in a .claude/skills/ folder by default, which is the same location Claude Code uses, or in a separate .agent/skills/ folder if you want to avoid any overlap between agents.

The main commands are: install (to bring in skills from a source), sync (to update the AGENTS.md manifest file), list (to see what is installed), read (which agents call to load a specific skill's instructions), and update (to refresh installed skills from their sources). The read command is what an AI agent calls at runtime when it decides a skill applies to the current task.

You can also create your own skills by writing a SKILL.md file following the same format. A skill can include additional reference documents and scripts in subfolders, and the skill's instructions can point agents to those files. The project is not affiliated with Anthropic and requires Node.js 20.6 or later and Git. It is licensed under Apache 2.0.