Skills

Skills are reusable capability modules that extend your coding agents with specialized functionality. They follow the open Agent Skills standard and sync to supported skill targets.

Browsing Skills

Open Library from the left sidebar, then select Skills. You'll see a catalog of available skills sourced from:

• OpenAI skill library
• Anthropic skill library

Click Refresh to fetch the latest skills from the OpenAI and Anthropic catalogs. Use the search box to filter loaded skills by name, description, or skill id.

If you want to use skills from another library, feel free to let us know through the feedback modal in the app.

Installing a Skill

1. Find a skill in the catalog
2. Click the skill card to view details, documentation, and example prompts when available
3. Click Install

Emdash downloads the skill to ~/.agentskills/ and automatically syncs it to supported skill targets installed on your machine. The skill is immediately available in your next agent session.

Uninstalling a Skill

1. Click an installed skill card
2. Click Uninstall in the detail modal

This removes the skill from ~/.agentskills/ and removes the symlinks from supported skill target directories.

Creating Custom Skills

1. Click New Skill in Library > Skills
2. Enter a name (lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens) and description
3. Click Create

Emdash generates a SKILL.md file in ~/.agentskills/<your-skill>/. You can open the installed skill from its detail modal to inspect or edit it. The file uses YAML frontmatter for metadata:

---
name: 'my-skill'
description: 'What this skill does'
---
# My Skill

Instructions and documentation for the agent...

Custom skills sync to supported skill targets just like catalog skills.

How Skills Work

Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file. When installed, Emdash creates symlinks in each agent's config directory:

This means skills you install through Emdash also work when you run these agents outside of Emdash.

Example Skills

The catalog includes skills for many common workflows:

• Deployment: Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify deploy
• Design: Figma integration, design implementation
• GitHub: Address PR comments, fix CI failures
• Documentation: Word docs, Jupyter notebooks
• Content: Image generation
• Integrations: Linear, Notion, Stripe, Twilio

Many skills include an example prompt showing how to invoke them.

Tips

• Skills persist across Emdash sessions—install once, use everywhere.
• Click Open on an installed skill to open its directory and inspect or edit the SKILL.md directly.
• Custom skills appear in the "Installed" section alongside catalog skills.