What are Skills?
Understanding how skills supercharge your AI coding agents
Skills are instruction sets that give AI coding agents (like Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, and others) specialized knowledge about specific technologies, frameworks, and best practices.
When you install a skill, your AI agent gains deep understanding of that technology - including API patterns, common gotchas, security best practices, and idiomatic usage patterns that would normally require extensive documentation reading.
Skills are defined as markdown files (SKILL.md) that contain structured instructions for the AI to follow when working with that technology.
How Skills Work
You install a skill
Run npx skills add supabase/agent-skills to download the skill to your project.
Skill files are added to your project
The CLI creates a .skills/ directory with the skill's markdown files.
Your AI agent reads the skills
When you work with your AI coding agent, it automatically reads the skill files and applies that knowledge to help you write better code.
Benefits of Skills
Expert Knowledge
Skills encode best practices from technology creators and community experts, giving your AI the same knowledge as a senior developer familiar with that stack.
Fewer Mistakes
Skills include common gotchas and anti-patterns, helping your AI avoid mistakes that would otherwise require debugging or code review to catch.
Security Best Practices
Many skills include security guidance, ensuring your AI writes secure code by default - proper input validation, authentication patterns, and more.
Always Up-to-Date
Skills are maintained by the community and technology creators. Run npx skills update to get the latest best practices.
What Skills Teach
A well-written skill teaches your AI agent things like:
- +Correct API usage patterns and function signatures
- +Idiomatic code style for the technology
- +Common mistakes to avoid (and why)
- +Security considerations and best practices
- +Performance optimization techniques
- +Testing patterns and strategies
- +Error handling conventions
Supported AI Agents
Skills work with any AI coding agent that can read files in your project: