Common workflows

Short, copy-pastable recipes for the patterns that come up most often. Each is self-contained - run top to bottom in a fresh shell.

Bootstrap a fresh project with a curated skill set

Pin an entire NuGet (or npm) skill collection at the project level, commit the lock, and your teammates reproduce on agentskills-cli add against the same source.

cd my-app
agentskills-cli add MyOrg.CuratedSkills -y
git add .agents/ skills-lock.json
git commit -m "chore: pin agent skills"

Teammates run agentskills-cli add <same source> -y to land the same skills. See Lock files for the project-lock schema.

Add a single skill globally so every project has it

-g writes to the global lock under ~/.agents/.skill-lock.json and installs into the per-agent global directories.

agentskills-cli add vercel-labs/agent-skills -g -s web-design-guidelines -y

After this, every project on the machine that has Claude Code (or Cursor, Codex, etc.) installed picks up web-design-guidelines without any per-project install step.

Try everything in a NuGet package, then prune

Useful when evaluating a community skill pack: install everything, see what's there, drop what you don't need.

agentskills-cli add MyOrg.AgentSkills -y                # installs all skills in the package
agentskills-cli list MyOrg.AgentSkills --paths          # what landed, with on-disk paths
agentskills-cli remove unused-skill -y                  # drop one specific skill
agentskills-cli remove MyOrg.AgentSkills -y             # ...or roll the whole package back

The --by package flag on list groups output by source package, which makes "what came from where" obvious when you have skills from multiple packages installed.

Drive dnx from CI without ever installing the tool

dnx resolves and runs the latest agentskills-cli from your configured NuGet feeds in one shot - no dotnet tool install step. Perfect for ephemeral CI runners.

dnx agentskills-cli -y -- add ./my-skill -a claude-code -y --copy

The -y -- before add tells dnx to skip its own confirmation prompt and pass everything after the -- as arguments to the tool.

For a CI run that publishes built artifacts to a local feed first and then verifies them:

dotnet pack src/MyOrg.AgentSkills -o ./local-feed
dnx agentskills-cli -y -- add MyOrg.AgentSkills \
  --nuget-source ./local-feed -a universal -y --copy

Requires .NET 10 SDK on the runner (dnx ships with .NET 10). For .NET 8-only runners, fall back to dotnet tool install --global agentskills-cli once at the top of the job.

Refresh everything from source

The update command queries the GitHub Trees API for every tracked GitHub source and reinstalls any that have drifted. Always preview with --check first.

agentskills-cli update --check                          # dry-run table
agentskills-cli update -g -y                            # actually update globals
agentskills-cli update -y                               # update the current project

Sources that can't be checked automatically (local paths, generic git URLs, GitLab, NuGet, npm) are listed as skipped in the output. See update for the full behavior and GitHub auth chain.

Set up a private NuGet feed for team skills

If your team publishes skills to an internal feed (Azure Artifacts, GitHub Packages, ProGet, MyGet, etc.), AgentSkills CLI reads your existing NuGet.config and credential providers automatically - no new auth surface.

# One-time, machine-wide:
dotnet nuget add source https://pkgs.contoso.com/v3/index.json \
  -n contoso -u $USER -p $TOKEN --store-password-in-clear-text

# Daily use - no auth flags needed, credentials picked up from NuGet.config:
agentskills-cli add Contoso.AgentSkills -y

For Azure Artifacts specifically, install the Azure Artifacts Credential Provider once and dotnet/agentskills-cli auth seamlessly.

Mirror the install on a teammate's box

Clone the project, run one command, your teammate has the same skills.

git clone <project repo> && cd <project>
# If the project lock pins to public sources, this just works:
agentskills-cli add $(cat skills-lock.json | jq -r '.skills | to_entries[] | .value.source')

A agentskills-cli install --from-lock command is on the roadmap; for now the loop above (or a tiny script) covers it.

Next

• Ship skills with your library - the long-form tutorial
• add, list, remove, update - full command reference
• Source formats - every supported source type