@malloy-publisher/skills

Start here

1. Learn. Read the getting-started skill. Nothing to install, no server:

   https://unpkg.com/@malloy-publisher/skills@latest/skills/malloy-getting-started/SKILL.md

   Every skill reads the same way. Put its name in place of malloy-getting-started.

2. Install. If your agent has a shell, copy every skill to where it loads them:

   npx -y @malloy-publisher/skills@latest install           # into this project
   npx -y @malloy-publisher/skills@latest install --global  # into your home directory
   npx -y @malloy-publisher/skills@latest list              # every skill, with a description

   Keep the @latest. Without it, npx may reuse an old cached copy and install old skills.

   install picks the agent from what it finds. A CLAUDE.md means .claude/skills/. An AGENTS.md or .cursor/ means .agents/skills/. With --global it looks for ~/.claude/, ~/.agents/, or ~/.cursor/ instead. If it finds none, it stops and asks you to name one: install claude or install agents.

What this package is

The agent skills that ship with Malloy Publisher, as files you can install. They are task-specific guides for writing Malloy, building and reviewing models, exploring data, and authoring HTML data apps.

Publisher already serves these skills over MCP, as prompts, including each skill's reference/ files. This package exists for the cases MCP does not cover: a host that reads skill files from disk (Claude Code and the Publisher plugin), a scaffolder that installs them into a new project, or any tool that wants the files themselves rather than prompt text.

Use the files from code

npm install @malloy-publisher/skills

Copy the skills into a project

import { cpSync } from "node:fs";
import { skillsDir } from "@malloy-publisher/skills";

cpSync(skillsDir, ".claude/skills", { recursive: true });

Copy the files rather than symlinking them. npm drops symlinks from a tarball, and a symlink into node_modules breaks the moment the tree is pruned or the package is hoisted somewhere else.

List what is available

import { listSkills } from "@malloy-publisher/skills";

for (const skill of listSkills()) {
   console.log(skill.name, skill.description, skill.dir);
}

listSkills() reads each skill's frontmatter from disk, so it cannot drift from the files it describes.

What is in it

Each skill is a directory holding a SKILL.md, and some also carry a reference/ directory that the skill points to for detail it does not inline. Start with malloy-getting-started. Use malloy-modeling to build or change a model, malloy-analysis to explore and answer questions, and malloy-review to check Malloy for correctness.

A few skills (malloy-modeling, malloy-publish, malloy-document, and malloy-getting-started) are written for a Publisher host and name Publisher's MCP tools directly. The rest describe Malloy itself and refer to tools by bare name (get_context, execute_query, search_malloy_docs), because the prefix depends on the host. search_database_schema maps the same way if a shared skill starts using it. On Publisher those are get_context, execute_query, search_malloy_docs, and search_database_schema.

Versioning

This package versions on its own line, separately from @malloy-publisher/server, sdk, and app. A skill edit does not need a server release.

The MCP prompt channel is a separate story: the server compiles the skill bodies into its own bundle at build time, so installing a newer version of this package does not change what an already-built server serves over MCP.

Contributing

The skills live at skills/ in the Publisher repo, and this package copies that directory in when it is packed. Edit them there.