SkillsGate

SkillsGate is a free, open-source desktop application built by Sultan Valiyev that lets developers browse, install, and manage reusable AI agent skills across more than 20 coding agents from a single visual interface. It is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux under the MIT license, with no account or cloud dependency required.

What It Is

SkillsGate addresses a specific friction point in AI-assisted development: managing SKILL.md files — reusable instruction sets that extend what coding agents can do — across multiple tools simultaneously. Instead of manually copying markdown files into the right config directories for each agent, SkillsGate provides a GUI that handles discovery, installation, editing, and remote management in one place. It integrates with skills.sh, an open directory of agent skills, to power its built-in catalog browser.

Supported Agents and Ecosystem

The app detects and manages skills for 20+ coding tools, including Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Cline, Continue, Codex CLI, Amp, Goose, Junie, Kilo Code, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Droid CLI, OB-1, Pear AI, Roo Code, Trae, and Zed. It also manages ~/.agents/skills, the shared folder used by the skills CLI. Per-agent control means a skill can be installed to Claude Code but not Cursor, or removed from Windsurf while keeping it in Copilot.

Core Features

• Visual skill browser — see every skill installed across all agents in one view, filter by agent, search by name, and preview content before installing
• Built-in markdown editor — edit any SKILL.md using a CodeMirror-powered editor with syntax highlighting; changes save directly to disk on Cmd+S
• skills.sh catalog integration — browse trending skills, check install counts, and open source repositories before installing
• Remote server management — connect to other machines over SSH to browse, edit, and push local skills with a change preview
• Local-first storage — settings, favorites, and server configs live in a local SQLite database; no account or cloud sync required
• Private skills — keep skills local to a machine or share them with a team

Architecture and Deployment

SkillsGate is a monorepo managed with npm workspaces, containing an Electron desktop app (apps/desktop) and a React Router v7 web app on Cloudflare Workers (apps/web), plus a shared React component package. The desktop app uses the native better-sqlite3 module for local storage. Development requires Node.js 22+. Releases ship as a DMG (macOS), NSIS installer (Windows), AppImage, and Debian package (Linux).

Update: desktop-v0.7.3

The latest release is desktop-v0.7.3, published on September 24, 2026. The README notes that macOS users on version 0.7.0 or earlier must update manually due to two bugs in the in-app updater: it could quit the app without relaunching when a macOS system update was pending, and it served Apple Silicon Macs the Intel build. Both issues were fixed from 0.7.2 onward. The terminal UI (skillsgate and @skillsgate/tui npm packages) was discontinued in September 2026 in favor of the desktop app; the npx skills add command from skills.sh is the recommended command-line alternative for installing public skills.