Windsurf (Devin Desktop) skills. Where they live and how to install them.

What skills are in Windsurf

Windsurf's documentation says skills let you bundle a SKILL.md with scripts, templates and checklists into a folder that Cascade, the in-editor agent, can invoke. Cascade sees only each skill's name and description by default. It loads the full SKILL.md and the supporting files when it decides to use the skill, or when you @-mention it. The format follows the open Agent Skills specification.

A naming note: Windsurf's site now redirects to Devin Desktop, which describes itself as the new name for Windsurf. The skills documentation still lives at docs.windsurf.com and still describes Cascade skills. Windsurf's docs also say the Devin Local agent uses the Devin CLI's skills format and discovery. This guide follows what the Windsurf skills page documents.

Where Windsurf looks for skills

For cross-agent compatibility it also discovers .agents/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/. If you have enabled Claude Code config reading, .claude/skills/ and ~/.claude/skills/ are scanned as well.

Install a skill

The examples use frontend-design from anthropics/skills, located at skills/frontend-design. Windsurf's documentation describes no command for importing a skill from a repository, so the options are the skills CLI or copying the folder.

Option 1: the skills CLI

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

This writes to .windsurf/skills/ in the current project, the legacy folder that Windsurf still reads. Add -g for a global install into ~/.codeium/windsurf/skills/.

Option 2: copy the folder

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

For a global skill, copy into ~/.codeium/windsurf/skills/ or ~/.config/devin/skills/ instead.

Option 3: create one from the UI

Open the Cascade panel, click the three dots to open the customizations menu, and go to Skills. Click + Workspace for a project skill or + Global for one that applies everywhere, then name it using lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. This is for authoring a new skill, so it is not a way to import an existing one.

Check that it loaded

Open the Skills section of the Cascade customizations menu to see the skills Cascade found. Then type @frontend-design in the Cascade input to use it explicitly, or describe a task that matches its description and let Cascade invoke it. The skill's name is what appears in the UI and what you use for @-mentions.

Update and remove

• Remove: delete the skill's folder, or run npx skills remove frontend-design.
• Update: copy a newer version of the folder over the old one, or run npx skills update for skills installed with that tool.
• Enterprise system skills are read-only and managed by whoever deploys them.

Troubleshooting

• The skill does not show up: confirm that the file is named SKILL.md, that it is inside its own subfolder, and that the frontmatter has both name and description.
• It is in the wrong place: the .devin/skills/ folder is preferred, with .windsurf/skills/ as a legacy fallback. For enterprise system skills, Windsurf loads the Devin directory if it exists and falls back to the legacy Windsurf directory only when it does not; the two are not merged.
• Cascade does not use it automatically: make the description specific about what the skill does and when to use it, or @-mention the skill.
• A Claude-style folder is ignored: .claude/skills/ is only scanned when Claude Code config reading is turned on.
• The product name confuses a search: look for Devin Desktop as well as Windsurf when you read release notes or support pages.

Safety

Skills can include scripts and reference files that Cascade will read and run with the permissions of your editor session. Read SKILL.md and any bundled files before you install a skill from a repository you have not used before, and prefer pinned tags or commits over a moving default branch. Workspace skills are committed with your repository, so review changes to .devin/skills/ in pull requests the same way you review code.