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

What skills are in Goose

Goose is an open-source agent that now sits under the Agentic AI Foundation at the Linux Foundation. Its documentation describes skills as reusable sets of instructions and resources that teach Goose how to perform specific tasks, from a simple checklist to a detailed workflow with scripts or templates. Skills run through a built-in Skills platform extension, which is enabled by default.

When a session starts, Goose adds the names and descriptions of the skills it finds to its instructions. It loads a skill's full content when your request clearly matches, or when you ask for it by name, for example "Use the code-review skill to review this PR." Goose says its skills are compatible with Claude Desktop and other agents that support the Agent Skills standard.

Where Goose looks for skills

Each skill is a subdirectory with a SKILL.md, for example ~/.agents/skills/code-review/SKILL.md. For backward compatibility Goose also discovers skills in .goose/skills/, .claude/skills/, ~/.claude/skills/ and platform-specific config folders, but it recommends .agents/skills/ as the standard.

Install a skill

Goose's documentation describes creating or placing skill folders, not a command that fetches them from GitHub. The examples use frontend-design from anthropics/skills, located at skills/frontend-design.

Option 1: 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

Use .agents/skills inside a repository for a project skill instead.

Option 2: the skills CLI

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

This writes to .goose/skills/ in the current project, or ~/.config/goose/skills/ with -g. Goose lists .goose/skills/ and platform-specific config folders as backward-compatible locations, so these installs should be picked up. If a skill does not appear, copy it into .agents/skills/ or ~/.agents/skills/ instead.

Option 3: GitHub CLI

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

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

Check that it loaded

Run goose skills list in your shell. In the Goose CLI, the /skills command lists available skills and can load one or more by name:

/skills frontend-design

You can also just ask Goose what skills are available. Skills from installed plugins are namespaced with the plugin name, such as my-plugin:review, so use the full name when loading one explicitly.

Update and remove

• Remove: delete the skill folder, or run npx skills remove frontend-design.
• Update: copy a newer version of the folder over the old one, or use npx skills update or gh skill update for skills those tools installed.
• Goose ships a built-in web-search skill that needs no installation. The documentation points to a separate browser-use skill install command for browser automation; that is for the upstream browser-use skill, not a general installer.

Troubleshooting

• The skill does not list: confirm the folder has a file named SKILL.md and that its frontmatter includes both name and description, which Goose requires.
• It was installed by another tool: check which folder the tool wrote to. If it is not one of the locations above, move the skill to ~/.agents/skills/.
• A skill from a plugin does not load by its short name: use the namespaced name, for example my-plugin:review.
• Skills are not picked up in a running session: skills are discovered when a session starts, so begin a new session after adding files.
• Goose does not follow the skill: make the description specific about when it applies, or name the skill in your request.

Safety

A skill can include scripts and setup commands that Goose runs with your account's access, using its developer tools to read the supporting files. Review SKILL.md and everything bundled with it before installing anything you did not write, and keep third-party skills in a project folder until you trust them rather than in your global folder where they apply to every session.