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

What skills are in Cursor

In Cursor, a skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file that follows the open Agent Skills standard. When Cursor starts it discovers the skills it can see and shows the agent their names and descriptions. The agent decides when one applies, or you can call a skill yourself by typing / in Agent chat and picking its name.

Cursor reads a few frontmatter fields beyond name and description. paths limits a skill to files that match glob patterns, disable-model-invocation: true makes it run only when you type /skill-name, and icon and color style the badge when a skill is used as a Custom Mode. The name must use lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, and it must match the parent folder name.

Where Cursor looks for skills

Cursor also finds .cursor/skills or .agents/skills folders nested inside your repository. A skill in apps/web/.cursor/skills/ is only offered while the agent works on files under apps/web/. Personal skills in ~/.cursor/skills/ stay on your machine unless you turn on Sync Skills for Cloud Agents.

Install a skill

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

Option 1: import a plugin repository

Cursor's documentation says skills are not imported on their own. To bring skills in from GitHub, package them in a plugin and publish it through a marketplace. In Customize, choose From GitHub Repository and enter the repository. The repository needs a .cursor-plugin/marketplace.json. You can also add a team marketplace. Then install the plugin, and its skills appear in Customize alongside your other skills. This only works for repositories that already ship Cursor plugin metadata.

Option 2: the skills CLI

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

This puts the skill in .agents/skills/ in the current project. Add -g for a global install into ~/.cursor/skills/.

Option 3: GitHub CLI

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

gh skill is a public preview and needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later.

Option 4: copy the folder

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

Copy into ~/.cursor/skills/ for a personal install. Commit .cursor/skills or .agents/skills if you want your team to get the skill from the repository.

Check that it loaded

Open Customize in the sidebar and go to Skills. Discovered skills are listed there, and skills installed from plugins or your project appear alongside rules in the Agent Decides section. Then type / in Agent chat and search for frontend-design. A skill invoked this way applies to one message. To keep it on for a whole session, use it as a Custom Mode with Option+Enter on a Mac or Alt+Enter on Windows.

Update and remove

• Plugin installs: manage them from Customize, the same place you installed them.
• Skills installed with the CLI: npx skills update and npx skills remove frontend-design.
• With gh: gh skill update.
• Manual copies: delete the folder, or copy a newer version over it.

Troubleshooting

• The skill is not listed: check the folder contains a file named exactly SKILL.md, and that name matches the folder name.
• The skill never triggers on its own: the description may be too vague, or disable-model-invocation: true is set, in which case only /skill-name works.
• A skill seems limited to some files: look for a paths field in its frontmatter, or note that it sits in a nested project folder and is scoped to that folder.
• A skill in ~/.agents/skills/ is missing in a Cloud Agent: Cursor copies only ~/.cursor/skills/ when sync is on, never ~/.agents/skills/. Put the skill in the repository instead.
• You have older rules or commands you want as skills: Cursor ships a built-in /migrate-to-skills skill that converts eligible ones into .cursor/skills/.

Safety

A skill can tell the agent to run scripts, and the agent acts with the permissions of your Cursor session. Read SKILL.md and anything under scripts/ before installing, particularly for skills from repositories you do not know. Check what a plugin adds before you enable it, and prefer pinning a tag or commit when installing from GitHub.