MoizIbnYousaf/ai-agent-skills

AI Agent Skills – What It Is

AI Agent Skills is an npm‑published CLI/TUI tool that ships a curated collection of “skills” (re‑usable code snippets, prompts, or small agents) and lets you create, organise, and maintain your own personal library of such skills. It works with any Agent‑Skills‑compatible AI agent (Claude, Cursor, Gemini, etc.) and is designed for developers who want a lightweight, shelf‑based catalogue of ready‑to‑install capabilities rather than a flat dump of hundreds of repos.

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Core Concepts

Concept	Meaning
Skill	A small, self‑contained piece of functionality for an AI agent – e.g. frontend‑design, webapp‑testing, swiftui‑ui‑patterns.
House copy	The skill’s source code lives locally under skills/<name>/ and is bundled with the npm package for instant offline install.
Cataloged upstream	Only metadata is stored locally (skills.json). The actual code lives in the original repo and is fetched on demand.
Shelf	A high‑level category (Frontend, Backend, Mobile, Workflow, Agent Engineering, Marketing) that groups related skills.
Collection	A named subset of skills drawn from one or more shelves (e.g. swift-agent-skills, mktg).
Workspace mode	A managed directory that tracks your custom library, allowing you to add, curate, vendor, sync, and rebuild documentation.

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What You Get Out‑of‑the‑Box

• A bundled library of ~115 cataloged skills (17 house copies) organised into six shelves.
• CLI (npx ai-agent-skills) for browsing, searching, installing, and curating skills.
• TUI (text‑based UI) for interactive exploration.
• Commands to manage a personal library – init-library, add, catalog, vendor, sync, build-docs, etc.
• Pre‑made collections such as swift-agent-skills and mktg that can be installed in one step.
• Support for multiple agents via the --agent <name> flag (Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, etc.).

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Quick‑Start Guide

# Run the interactive browser (TUI)
npx ai-agent-skills

# List all shelves
npx ai-agent-skills list

# Install a single skill from the bundled library
npx ai-agent-skills install frontend-design

# Install an entire collection (e.g. all Swift‑related skills)
npx ai-agent-skills install --collection swift-agent-skills -p

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Building Your Own Library

# Create a managed workspace called “my‑library”
npx ai-agent-skills init-library my-library
cd my-library

# Add a house‑copy skill to the Frontend shelf
npx ai-agent-skills add frontend-design \
    --area frontend \
    --branch Implementation \
    --why "I use this on every UI prototype."

# Pull in an upstream skill without copying the repo
npx ai-agent-skills catalog openai/skills \
    --skill webapp-testing \
    --area workflow \
    --branch Testing \
    --why "Browser‑level checks for CI pipelines."

# Install what you just added and rebuild the docs
npx ai-agent-skills install frontend-design -p
npx ai-agent-skills build-docs

The workflow repeats for as many skills as you need; you can later sync to refresh upstream versions or vendor a skill if you want a local copy.

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How It Works Under the Hood

1. Metadata (skills.json) – Lists every cataloged skill, its source repo, shelf, branch, and an editorial note (--why).
2. House copies – Stored under skills/ and packaged with the npm module for instant install.
3. Installation targets – By default skills are copied to ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .agents/skills/ inside a project. The --agent flag can redirect to other agent‑specific directories.
4. CLI commands – Thin wrappers that clone the upstream repo (if needed), copy files, and optionally run post‑install hooks defined by the skill.
5. Documentation generation – build-docs walks the library and produces markdown/HTML docs that describe each shelf, skill provenance, and usage examples.

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Who Should Use This

• AI‑agent developers who want a repeatable, searchable catalogue of prompts, tools, or code snippets.
• Teams building custom agents and needing a shared, version‑controlled skill set.
• Individual contributors who like the “shelf” metaphor for keeping a small, well‑curated toolbox.

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Installation

# The package is published on npm
npm i -g ai-agent-skills   # or use npx without installing globally

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Extending / Contributing

The repo includes:

• CURATION.md – guidelines for adding or editing skills.
• CONTRIBUTING.md – standard contribution workflow.
• A test suite (npm test, npm run test:live) that validates CLI behaviour and live install flows.

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License & Availability

The project is open‑source on GitHub (MIT‑style licensing is typical for npm packages, though the README does not spell it out). All code, documentation, and the curated skill list are publicly viewable.

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Bottom Line

AI Agent Skills provides a practical, command‑line‑first way to manage a personal or team‑wide library of AI‑agent capabilities, keeping provenance clear, shelves small, and installation painless. If you already work with Claude, Cursor, Gemini, or any other Agent‑Skills‑compatible system, this tool can become the central hub for the reusable bits you rely on every day.