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Getting Started

This guide covers what skills are, how to install them, and how to use them in your AI-assisted engineering workflow.

What Is a Skill?

A skill is a folder containing instructions, scripts, and reference material that an AI agent loads on demand. Skills follow the open Agent Skills standard and work with GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, and other compatible tools.

Skills manage LLM context efficiently — the agent does not receive all skill content at startup. Instead, it loads content progressively:

Phase What Happens
Discovery At startup, the agent loads only the name and description of each installed skill
Activation When your task matches a skill's description, the agent reads the full SKILL.md into context
Execution The agent follows the skill's instructions, optionally loading reference files or running bundled scripts

⚠️ The description field is the sole activation signal. If a skill isn't firing, your prompt likely doesn't match its description keywords. Rephrase your message to include relevant trigger terms from the skill's description. Inside a Copilot CLI session, run /skills list to inspect loaded descriptions. Outside the CLI, you can run npx skills list -g to see all the installed skills.

Prerequisites: Install Copilot CLI

We use the GitHub Copilot CLI as the primary AI-assisted engineering tool.

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://gh.io/copilot-install | bash

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install copilot-cli

# Any platform (npm)
npm install -g @github/copilot

Then launch a session from your project directory:

copilot

Install Skills

Option A: Vercel Skills CLI (recommended)

The Vercel Skills CLI automates installation via npx:

# List available skills from this repo without installing them
npx skills add https://github.com/AbsaOSS/agentic-toolkit --list

# Install all skills globally (available in every project)
npx skills add https://github.com/AbsaOSS/agentic-toolkit -g

# Install a single skill globally (--skill filters by folder name within the repo)
npx skills add https://github.com/AbsaOSS/agentic-toolkit -g --skill pr-review

# Install project-scoped (into .github/skills/ of the current repo)
npx skills add https://github.com/AbsaOSS/agentic-toolkit

To share project-scoped skills with your team, commit the .github/skills/ directory.

On first install, npx skills add asks two questions interactively:

Prompt Options Recommendation
Installation method Symlink / Copy Use Symlink — a single copy lives on disk, and npx skills update refreshes it in place. Use Copy only if symlinks aren't supported in your environment.
Which agents to install to? A specific agent directory / Copy to all agents Choose Copy to all agents if you want the skills available in Copilot, Claude, Cursor, and any other compatible tool simultaneously. Pick a specific directory to limit the scope.

These choices are recorded and reused on subsequent updates — you won't be asked again unless you reinstall from scratch. The global skills directory used is typically ~/.agents/skills/ (recommended for cross-tool compatibility) or ~/.copilot/skills/. See Skills directory location varies if you need to change it later.

Update installed skills

npx skills update         # interactive — prompts for scope
npx skills update -g      # update global skills
npx skills update -y      # auto-detects scope: project-scope if running within a project, else global

Option B: Manual install

Clone this repo and copy skills into your personal space:

git clone https://github.com/AbsaOSS/agentic-toolkit.git
cp -r agentic-toolkit/skills/*/ ~/.agents/skills/

Skills copied into ~/.agents/skills/ (or ~/.copilot/skills/) are loaded automatically at every session start — no further action needed.

Verify Skills Are Loaded

Inside a Copilot CLI session:

/skills list    # See all loaded skills and their descriptions
/env            # Full environment: skills, agents, MCP servers, instructions

Confirm the skills appear in the list.

Using Skills in Copilot CLI

GitHub Copilot CLI resolves skills from two locations:

Scope Location When To Use
Global ~/.agents/skills/ or ~/.copilot/skills/ Available across all projects
Project .github/skills/ Specific to one repo — commit to share with your team

Project skills take precedence over global skills when both exist.

Managing skills mid-session

/skills add <path>        # Add a skill to the current session (temporary)
/skills remove <name>     # Remove a skill from the current session (temporary)

Session-level changes are temporary. Use npx skills add or the manual copy for permanent changes.

Add project-specific skills

For skills that only apply to a specific repository, place them in .github/skills/ within that repo. These are loaded automatically when Copilot CLI is launched from that directory, layered on top of your personal and CPS base skills.

your-project-repo/
└── .github/
    └── skills/
        └── your-project-skill/
            └── SKILL.md

Troubleshooting

Running into issues? See docs/troubleshooting.md guide.