skills_lint

This is not an officially supported Google product. This project is not eligible for the Google Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program.

A static analysis linter for Agent Skills to ensure they meet the specification in presubmit checks. This project is a Dart package and can be run as a CLI tool to validate your skills directory before committing.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Installation
• Usage
  • Rule Precedence
• Built-in Rules
• Recipes
• Contributing

Overview

An Agent Skill is a portable, self-contained directory that extends an AI agent’s capabilities.

By default, skills_lint enforces the Agent Skills specification. We recommend starting with the configuration in the skills-lint-setup skill.

Installation

skills_lint ships as both a standalone native binary (no Dart SDK required) and as a Dart package on pub.dev. Pick the path that matches your environment.

1. Dart developers — pub.dev

If you already have the Dart SDK installed, the standard pub.dev paths still work and are unchanged.

As a project dev_dependency

Add to your pubspec.yaml:

dev_dependencies:
  skills_lint: ^0.5.3+1

Then:

dart pub get

Globally installed

For multiple projects without per-project pubspec entries:

dart install skills_lint

2. install.sh — Linux + macOS, no Dart required

The recommended path for CI runners and laptops without the Dart SDK on PATH. Downloads the matching prebuilt binary from the latest GitHub Release, verifies its SHA256, and installs to /usr/local/bin (with a sudo fallback). It works on each platform that the release has a skills_lint-.tar.gz for, and names those platforms on any other machine. The macOS binaries need macOS 14 or later; on older versions it stops with an error.

curl -fsSL https://github.com/google/skills_lint.dart/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Optional env vars (set before the bash part):

• INSTALL_DIR — install destination (default /usr/local/bin).
• VERSION — pin a specific release like 0.4.0 (default latest).
• REPO — alternate source repo (default google/skills_lint.dart).

macOS first-launch note

macOS binaries are not yet code-signed. The first time you run the binary, macOS Gatekeeper will block it (“cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified”). Remove the quarantine flag once:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$(which skills_lint)"

This step goes away once notarized builds ship.

3. Direct download — Linux + macOS, no install script