Getting started

SkillMD ships one CLI: skillmd. You use it two ways: pull skills other people published, or scaffold and publish your own. This page covers both.

Install the CLI

You need Node 18 or later. Install the package globally:

npm i -g skillmds

The package is named skillmds on npm, but it installs a binary called skillmd. That binary is what you run for everything below. The package also bundles an MCP server binary if you want to connect SkillMD to an agent over MCP instead of the CLI; see the MCP server docs for that setup.

Install an existing skill

Search the registry, then add what you find. --verified restricts results to skills that passed safety review.

npm i -g skillmds
skillmd search "pdf extraction" --verified
skillmd add anthropic/pdf

By default, skillmd add writes to whichever agent skills directory already exists in your project, falling back to Claude Code's. If you want to be explicit, or you use more than one agent, target them directly:

skillmd add anthropic/pdf -a claude-code cursor
skillmd add anthropic/pdf -g

-a takes one or more agent names. -g installs to your user-level skills directory instead of the current project. Skills land at <agent-dir>/<skill-name>/SKILL.md, where the directory depends on the agent:

Once installed, the skill is just a file on disk. Your agent picks it up the next time it scans its skills directory.

Create and publish your own

A skill is one file: SKILL.md, with YAML frontmatter and markdown instructions underneath.

---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill does and when to use it.
license: MIT
---

Instructions the agent reads when it loads this skill.

Scaffold, validate, and ship it with four commands:

skillmd init my-skill
skillmd lint
skillmd login
skillmd publish

skillmd init my-skill creates the file above in a new folder. Edit the frontmatter and instructions to match what your skill actually does, then run skillmd lint. Lint checks the file against the SKILL.md format and prints a quality score, so fix what it flags before moving on. skillmd login stores an auth token on your machine, and skillmd publish submits the skill.

Published skills go through review before anyone can install them. A safety review runs first, and only skills that pass it become publicly visible in search.

Next steps

• Read the full SKILL.md format reference for every frontmatter field and validation rule.
• Check the CLI reference for every skillmd command and flag.
• Wire SkillMD into your agent directly over MCP instead of the CLI.