skills-manifest

A lightweight manifest manager for skills, enabling project-level skill synchronization and collaborative configuration.

[!IMPORTANT] ~~The skills add <args> command will not automatically update the skills-manifest.json file.~~ ~~Since skills does not currently support project-level lock files, this project serves as a temporary solution for sharing and persisting skills across collaborative environments.~~

Now you can use skills add to add skills to the manifest.

Init & sync with skills

Run once in your project:

npx skills-manifest init

This will:

• Install skills and skills-manifest as dev dependencies
• Create skills-manifest.json and add a prepare script that runs skills-manifest install
• Add skills to .gitignore

Then run:

skills-manifest install

install syncs skills from the manifest and injects a wrapper into node_modules/skills so that:

| When you run | skills-manifest also runs | |--------------|---------------------------| | skills add <repo> [--skill ...] | skills-manifest add <repo> [...] — the repo and skills are written to skills-manifest.json | | skills remove <skills...> | skills-manifest remove for each repo that had those skills |

To add a skill without updating the manifest (e.g. one-off try), use:

skills add <repo> --skip-manifest

Install (manual)

Alternatively, install without init:

pnpm add skills skills-manifest -D

Config

skills-manifest.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hairyf/skills-manifest/main/skills-manifest.schema.json",
  "agents": ["cursor", "claude-code"],
  "skills": {
    "vercel-labs/agent-skills": {
      "vercel-react-best-practices": true
    },
    // or array of skills
    "https://github.com/vercel-labs": ["find-skills"]
  }
}

.gitignore:

skills

package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "prepare": "skills-manifest install"
  }
}

AGENTS.md for AI Agents

After you have configured skills-manifest.json and run skills-manifest install to generate the skills tree, we recommend using OpenSkills to produce an AGENTS.md that AI agents can consume:

npx openskills sync

This keeps your installed skills in sync with an AGENTS.md (or custom output path) so agents that read it (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) can discover and use the same skills. See OpenSkills for options such as --universal and -o <path>.

License

MIT License © Hairyf