SkillKeeper

SkillKeeper installs and manages skills and hooks for AI coding agents (Claude, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, OpenCode).

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Overview

SkillKeeper comes in two forms over one shared Rust core:

• A desktop app for browsing and installing Git repositories of skills, their hooks, and sets of MCP server presets - for AI coding agents, either per-project or globally.
• A command-line tool (skillkeeper) that does the same from your shell and in scripts.

Skills are distributed as Git repositories; a repository can also ship MCP server presets. SkillKeeper clones a repository, resolves what it provides, installs the parts you choose into the agents you target, and tracks everything for updates. Supported agents: Claude, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, and OpenCode.

Install

Desktop app -- download the bundle for your platform from the latest release.

CLI (skillkeeper) -- one line, using only tools already on your system. The script detects your platform, downloads the matching CLI archive from the latest release, and adds the binary to your PATH. On Linux it reads the host's glibc and picks between the glibc build and the statically linked musl one, so it installs a binary that runs on old distributions too.

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lorem-dev/skillkeeper/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lorem-dev/skillkeeper/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

See Getting Started for other options.

Hitting an install problem -- macOS reporting the app as "damaged", or a Linux GLIBC_2.34' not found on start? See Troubleshooting.

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CLI quick start

The CLI binary is skillkeeper. Every command exits non-zero on failure.

Add a repository of skills, then see what it provides:

skillkeeper repo add git@github.com:example/skills.git
skillkeeper skill list

Install a skill for an agent (per-project by default; add --global for machine-wide). Hooks are privileged and only installed with --allow-hooks:

skillkeeper skill install <skill-id> --agent claude
skillkeeper skill install <skill-id> --agent codex --global --allow-hooks

Track a project, then check for available updates across its repositories and installed skills:

skillkeeper project add .
skillkeeper check

Inspect, verify against the manifest, and repair an installation:

skillkeeper skill info <skill-id>
skillkeeper skill verify <skill-id>
skillkeeper skill repair <skill-id>

Print the command that updates the CLI itself to the latest release, without remembering the installer URL:

skillkeeper update

Supported agents are claude, codex, copilot, cursor, and opencode. Run skillkeeper --help (or <command> --help) for the full command set, also documented in the CLI Reference.

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Repositories

A repository is any Git remote (SSH or HTTPS, public or private) that contains one or more skills, and optionally MCP server presets. A skill is a directory with a manifest plus the files it installs; hooks are opt-in edits a skill can make to an agent's configuration. To publish your own skills, create a Git repository with that layout and point SkillKeeper at it with repo add.

See Repositories and Skills and Hooks for the repository format and authoring guide.

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Example repository

skillkeeper-test-repo is a fixture repository that exercises every documented resolution path: flat and nested grouped skills (up to three levels), both hook layouts, guidance-file precedence, MCP presets at the repository root and inside nested group directories, and a deliberately unresolvable skill. It is wired into this repository as a Git submodule at examples/test-repo. Fetch it with git submodule update --init (the submodule uses an SSH remote, so this needs a GitHub SSH key; the fixture is not required by any build or test).

Entry points -- the links go to GitHub, the paths are where the files land once the submodule is checked out:

• minimal-skill/SKILL.md -- the smallest valid skill manifest.
• json-hooks-skill/hooks/pre-tool-use/HOOK.md -- a hook that merges into an agent's JSON config.
• mcp.yml and tooling/mcp.yml -- root and nested group-scoped MCP presets.

Links into a submodule cannot be relative: this repository's tree stores examples/test-repo as a commit pointer, not as files, so a relative path would 404 on GitHub.

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Development

SkillKeeper is a Rust + pnpm monorepo: a Cargo workspace of domain crates (skillkeeper-core, skillkeeper-config, skillkeeper-agents, skillkeeper-cli) with a Tauri v2 + React desktop app, all over one shared Rust core.

See the Development guide for setup, commands, and conventions.

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License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.