skilld

Skilld is an open-source CLI tool and companion web directory built by Harlan Wilton that generates version-aware AI agent skills from the documentation, changelogs, issues, and discussions already published by package maintainers. It runs locally, requires no external MCP server, and works with any agent CLI or LLM. The core product is available under the MIT license on GitHub.

What It Is

Skilld addresses a specific problem in AI-assisted development: coding agents have knowledge cutoffs and often apply outdated patterns when working with newer package versions. Skilld solves this by generating structured SKILL.md files — reusable instruction sets that give agents current, version-aware context about the libraries in a project. The web directory at skilld.dev acts as a curated registry where community members can discover, browse, and install skills published by package maintainers and individual developers.

How the CLI Works

The CLI is the primary interface for generating and managing skills. Running npx -y skilld in a project launches an interactive wizard that auto-discovers dependencies from package.json and generates skills for them. Key workflow steps include:

• Add skills for specific packages: skilld add npm:vue npm:nuxt
• Add pre-authored skills from GitHub repos: skilld add gh:vercel-labs/agent-skills
• Search indexed docs across installed skills: skilld search "useFetch options" -p nuxt
• Update outdated skills: skilld update
• Eject a skill as a portable, shareable directory: skilld author eject vue

Skills are stored as SKILL.md files that stay under 500 lines, with references as separate files the agent discovers on demand — following Claude Code skill best practices. The tool supports Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and other agents, and also works with no agent CLI at all by exporting portable prompts for use in any LLM interface.

Architecture and Local-First Design

Unlike MCP-based approaches such as Context7, Skilld generates skills that live in the project itself. There is no per-prompt server round-trip. The README explicitly contrasts the two: "Skilld is local-first: it generates a SKILL.md that lives in your project, tied to your actual package versions. No MCP dependency, no per-prompt latency." Additional capabilities include:

• Semantic search via sqlite-vec embeddings (the retriv library)
• Prompt injection sanitization for GitHub issue content
• Version-aware caching with auto-updates on new releases
• Local model support via Ollama auto-detection
• Ecosystem compatibility with skills-npm and skills.sh

The skilld.dev Web Directory

The companion website serves as a curated registry of community-published skills. Skills are sourced from SKILL.md files in public GitHub repositories. The directory organizes skills by outcome (plan, review, debug, ship), by maintainer, and into curated collections. Publishers visible on the site include Vercel, Supabase, n8n, Langfuse, Bitwarden, PostHog, Pulumi, and individual developers such as Matt Pocock, Addy Osmani, and Anthony Fu. A leaderboard ranks skills by GitHub stars of the source repository. Users can also subscribe to a weekly digest of skill changes for repositories they follow.

For Package Maintainers

Maintainers can ship skills directly inside their npm packages so consumers receive them automatically without any LLM cost. Running npx skilld author from a package root generates a skills/<package>/ directory and adds it to the files array in package.json. Consumers then run skilld prepare (or add it to their prepare script) to auto-detect and symlink shipped skills into their agent's skill directory. This path is compatible with the skills-npm convention created by Anthony Fu.

Update: v2.0.0

The latest release is v2.0.0, published in May 2026. The repository is actively maintained under the skilld-dev GitHub organization, with recent pushes and ongoing skill updates visible in the web directory's "Recently updated" feed. The project is written in TypeScript and licensed under MIT.