How to add agent skills to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and Copilot

Where each agent looks

A skill is a folder named after the skill, with SKILL.md inside. Put it in a project folder to share it through the repository, or in your home folder to use it everywhere.

• Claude Code: .claude/skills/ in the project, ~/.claude/skills/ for you. When two share a name, your personal one wins over the project's.
• Cursor: .cursor/skills/ and .agents/skills/, and it also reads .claude/skills/.
• GitHub Copilot: .github/skills/, .claude/skills/ or .agents/skills/ in the repository, ~/.copilot/skills/ for you.
• Codex: .agents/skills/ in the repository, ~/.agents/skills/ for you.
• Gemini CLI: .gemini/skills/ or .agents/skills/, and the same under your home folder.

The quick way: npx skills

Vercel's open-source skills CLI installs any skill repository on GitHub into the folder your agent reads. It needs Node 22.20 or later. skills.sh is its directory, where you can search before you install.

npx skills add supabase/agent-skills
npx skills add vercel-labs/agent-skills --skill web-design-guidelines
npx skills add expo/skills -g
npx skills list
npx skills update

In Claude Code: plugins

A plugin bundles skills with commands, agents and hooks. Anthropic's own marketplace, claude-plugins-official, is there from the start; add another with its GitHub repository.

/plugin install expo@claude-plugins-official
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

Write your own

The open specification at agentskills.io asks for two fields. The name is 1 to 64 lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, and matches the folder's name. The description is up to 1,024 characters and says what the skill does and when to use it. Claude's platform adds two limits: no XML tags in either field, and no "claude" or "anthropic" in the name.

---
name: release-notes
description: Writes release notes from the commits since the last tag, grouped into fixes and features. Use when asked for release notes or a changelog.
---

1. Run git describe --tags --abbrev=0 to find the last tag.
2. Read git log <tag>..HEAD --oneline.
3. Group the commits into Fixes and Features. Leave out merge commits.
4. Write one line per change, in the past tense.

Keep SKILL.md under 500 lines. Longer material goes in a references/ folder, scripts in scripts/, and the agent opens them when the steps point to them.

Before you install anything

A skill can include scripts the agent runs on your machine. Install skills from the companies that publish them or from sources you have read, open SKILL.md and the scripts folder first, and remove what you stop using with npx skills remove.