Amp skills. Where they live and how to install them.

What skills are in Amp

Amp's documentation describes skills as directories that contain instructions and optional resources for specific tasks. Amp lists every discovered skill for the model with its name and description, and loads the rest of SKILL.md only when the skill is invoked. Amp includes built-in skills, and you can keep your own in a project, install them for one machine, or publish them to a personal or workspace skills repository.

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md that has name and description frontmatter. It can also contain scripts, templates and reference files. A skill can even declare MCP servers, either in a sibling mcp.json or in an mcpServers frontmatter field. Their tools stay hidden until the skill loads.

Where Amp looks for skills

Amp uses the first skill it finds with a given frontmatter name. The order is:

1. ~/.config/agents/skills/
2. ~/.agents/skills/
3. ~/.config/amp/skills/
4. .agents/skills/ in the project and its parent directories
5. .claude/skills/ in those directories
6. ~/.claude/skills/
7. ~/.claude/plugins/cache/
8. Folders listed in the amp.skills.path setting
9. Your personal skills repository, then your workspace skills repository
10. Official Amp skills

Local skills mask repository skills of the same name. Amp searches local skill folders recursively, up to five directories below each skills root.

Install a skill

The examples use frontend-design from anthropics/skills, located at skills/frontend-design.

Option 1: amp skill add

amp skill add https://github.com/anthropics/skills

The source can be a GitHub repository, a Git URL or a local path. Pass --global to install it only on the current machine, under ~/.config/agents/skills/. Amp saves project skills under .agents/skills/. The documentation does not describe how a repository with many skills is handled, so read any prompts before you confirm. You can also ask Amp in a thread to install skills from a GitHub repository, using its built-in building-skills skill.

Option 2: the skills CLI

npx skills add anthropics/skills --skill frontend-design -a amp

This installs into .agents/skills/ in the current project. Add -g for ~/.config/agents/skills/.

Option 3: GitHub CLI

gh skill install anthropics/skills frontend-design --agent amp
gh skill install anthropics/skills frontend-design --agent amp --scope user

Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later, where gh skill is a public preview.

Option 4: copy the folder

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/anthropics/skills.git skills-src
mkdir -p .agents/skills
cp -r skills-src/skills/frontend-design .agents/skills/frontend-design
rm -rf skills-src

Copy into ~/.config/agents/skills/ for a machine-wide install.

Check that it loaded

Run amp skills list in your shell, adding --json for machine-readable output. Inside Amp you can ask it to list the skills available in the thread and where each one came from, or open the interactive CLI command palette with Ctrl+O and run skills: list. Running amp skills list in another shell does not reload a thread that is already running. For that, ask Amp to reload your skills or use the reload_skills tool, which rescans local directories and fetches the latest personal and workspace skills.

Update and remove

• Remove: delete the skill folder, or run npx skills remove frontend-design.
• Update: copy a newer version of the folder, or run npx skills update or gh skill update for skills those tools installed.
• Imported shared skills are managed with the amp skill import and amp skill update commands.
• Repository-hosted skills have their own limits: 200 skills per repository, 200 files per skill, 10 MiB per file and 25 MiB per skill, and the files must be text. These limits do not apply to local project folders.

Troubleshooting

• The wrong version runs: Amp keeps the first skill with a given name, so a copy in ~/.config/agents/skills/ can hide one in your project. Check the order above, and rename or remove the duplicate.
• You do not want Claude-compatible skills: set amp.skills.disableClaudeCodeSkills to skip .claude/skills/ and ~/.claude/skills/. Use amp.skills.disableGlobalAgentsSkills to skip ~/.config/agents/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/.
• A skill in a hosted repository is missing: skills must be in immediate child directories of the repository root, and Amp loads only the first 200 skill directories alphabetically.
• The directory name and the name in SKILL.md must match for hosted repository skills.
• A change does not appear in a running thread: ask Amp to reload skills.

Safety

A skill can instruct Amp to run commands and can register MCP servers, so it runs with your account's access. Read SKILL.md, any mcp.json and every script before you install a skill from a source you do not know. Hosted skills are published when you push to the skills repository, so Amp asks before pushing. Treat that prompt as a review step rather than a formality.