agent-skills

A centralized, local skill registry for Claude Code and Codex.

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What is it? Watch the explainer below.

This fun little explainer video was made by the explainer-animation skill, using Claude Opus 5.5

This repository contains reusable agent skills, along with a small management layer that maintains them in a single source and distributes them across projects via symlinks (macOS/Linux) or junctions (Windows).

You can add a specific skill to a project, or install a predefined bundle of skills. This does not replace the standard agent-specific skills workflow — you can still drop a SKILL.md into .claude/skills or .codex/skills manually. This adds a central home for skills you want to reuse across projects and agents.

By default, skills are installed into both .claude/skills and .codex/skills. Set AGENT_SKILLS_TARGETS to customize the target directories.

The old hnl-claude-skills.* script names and CLAUDE_SKILLS environment variable remain supported for compatibility. New installs should use agent-skills.* and AGENT_SKILLS.

Example

In your project root, run skill-add reflect. This installs the reflect skill in .claude/skills and .codex/skills as symlinks/junctions pointing to the local repository at ~/.config/agent-skills. No matter how many projects use the skill, it lives in one place — update it in the repository, and every project picks up the change immediately.

Bundles

You can also define bundles - predefined collections of skills. Example: skill-bundle-add web_development installs all skills in that bundle at once, each as a symlink/junction to the repository — the same as adding them individually. Bundles also support inheritance: web_development can extend code_development, which in turn extends general, so installing web_development pulls in the full chain automatically.

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Skills included

Last updated: 25 September 2026

Grouped by the bundle they belong to. Installing a bundle also installs the bundles it extends.

general

writing

code_development (extends general)

web_development (extends general and code_development)

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Installation

Windows (PowerShell):

1. Clone the repository

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/c-kick/hnl-agent-skills.git "$HOME/.config/hnl-agent-skills"

Note: PowerShell does not expand ~ for external programs like git. Always use $HOME instead.

The default location is ~/.config/hnl-agent-skills. To use a different path, clone there instead and set AGENT_SKILLS in your environment before sourcing the script. Existing CLAUDE_SKILLS setups still work as a fallback.

2. Add to PowerShell profile (Run notepad $PROFILE in PowerShell*):

# Optional: set a custom location
# $env:AGENT_SKILLS = "D:\path\to\hnl-agent-skills"
# $env:AGENT_SKILLS_TARGETS = ".claude\skills;.codex\skills"
. "$HOME\.config\hnl-agent-skills\agent-skills.ps1"

If you get an error running notepad $PROFILE, this means you don’t have a PowerShell profile yet. You can create one with New-Item -Path $PROFILE -ItemType File -Force

Reload your shell (in Windows PowerShell, just run . $PROFILE), done.

macOS/Linux

1. Clone the repository

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/c-kick/hnl-agent-skills.git ~/.config/hnl-agent-skills

2. Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

# Optional: set a custom location
# export AGENT_SKILLS="/path/to/hnl-agent-skills"
# export AGENT_SKILLS_TARGETS=".claude/skills .codex/skills"
. "$HOME/.config/hnl-agent-skills/agent-skills.sh"

Log out of SSH and back in again, and your bashrc should now expose all th ecommands listed below.

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Commands

All commands are run from any project root you want to use the skills in.

skill-ls status codes

skill-ls-installed status codes

skill-add status codes

Updating skills

To update the skills from this repository, just use:

skill-update

Works from any directory, runs git pull and git submodule update --remote in the registry. All projects with linked skills pick up changes immediately — no action needed in individual projects.

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Bundles

Bundles are defined in bundles.conf. Format:

[bundle-name]
extends=other-bundle,another-bundle   # optional, comma-separated
skill-one
skill-two

• extends resolves recursively and deduplicates — installing web_development also installs everything in code_development and general.
• Circular extends are detected and hard-error.
• Multiple parents are supported: extends=general,code_development.

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Adding your own skills

You don’t have to rely on the skills that this repository gives you - you can add your own to the local repository!

Create a skill and copy its folder to ~/.config/hnl-agent-skills/ (or whichever AGENT_SKILLS path you’re using). Once added, skill-add my-skill works in any project just like any other skill.

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Adding an external skill repo

For skills that live in their own repository, add them as a submodule:

cd ~/.config/agent-skills   # on Windows PowerShell, use: cd "$HOME/.config/agent-skills"
git submodule add https://github.com/you/skill-repo.git skill-name
git commit -m "add: skill-name as submodule"
git push

To update a submodule to its latest version:

cd ~/.config/agent-skills   # on Windows PowerShell, use: cd "$HOME/.config/agent-skills"
git submodule update --remote skill-name
git commit -m "update: skill-name to latest"
git push

Or just run skill-update to pull everything at once.

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Known limitations

skill-bundle-remove removes the full resolved chain. If you manually added a skill via skill-add before running skill-bundle-add, and that skill is part of the bundle’s resolved chain, skill-bundle-remove will remove it. This is by design — remove mirrors add exactly. If you want to keep a skill after removing a bundle, re-add it manually with skill-add.