Skills Manager

Skills Manager organizes skills into different scopes:

• Library: The central repository of all installed skills (defaults to ~/.skills-manager).
• Global Workspace: Manages per-agent global skills (e.g., ~/.claude/skills/). It shows all skills currently visible to the agent, including those installed outside of Skills Manager.
• Project Workspace: Manages skills located within a specific project directory (e.g., <project>/.claude/skills/). These skills are scoped only to that project.
• Linked Workspace: Allows you to point to any arbitrary directory as a skills root. These act as standalone workspaces and do not participate in global preset sync.

Version 1.28.2 introduced performance improvements to reduce startup lag and UI stuttering:

• Background Scanning: Skill directory scanning for agents is now performed in the background after the window appears, rather than blocking the initial startup.
• Efficient Traversal: Project and workspace scanning now performs a single recursive traversal per skill instead of two.
• Reduced File Monitoring Overhead: The file monitor uses a monotonic clock and content hashing to prevent redundant full refreshes caused by the application's own write operations.

The skills-manager-cli manages a central skill library at ~/.skills-manager/skills/ that is shared across all installed agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI).

Core Lifecycle:

1. Install a skill into the central library.
2. Add the skill to a Preset (a named group of skills).
3. Sync the preset to all enabled agents (via symlink or copy).

Shortcut: Use skills install <ref> --sync to perform all three steps at once (install + add to active preset + sync).

Important for Automation:

• Always use the --json flag when parsing output.
• Errors are returned as {"ok": false, "error": "..."} on stderr with a non-zero exit code.
• Verify installations using skills list or skills show <name>.

The preferred method for connecting a backup is using GitHub login, which eliminates the need for manual repository creation or Personal Access Tokens (PAT).

1. Navigate to the Backup page.
2. Select the GitHub login option.
3. Enter the 8-digit code provided in the application into your browser.
4. The application will automatically create a private repository named skills-manager-backup (this name is configurable) and handle the rest.

Credentials are stored securely in your system's keychain and are never exposed in files or to the application itself.

In version 1.20.0, skill activation and deactivation moved from individual skill flags to preset membership. Instead of using skills enable or skills disable (which are now deprecated), use the following commands to manage which skills are synced to an Agent via a preset:

• presets add-skill: Add a skill to a preset.
• presets remove-skill: Remove a skill from a preset.
• presets deactivate: Deactivate a preset and revoke its sync targets. (Aliases: close, stop, off, disable).

If you deactivate the currently active preset, the system will automatically apply an alternative preset. If a different preset is deactivated, the system will re-sync the currently active preset to ensure shared skills remain in the Agent directory.

A Preset is a named collection of Skills. You can use Presets to quickly activate or deactivate a group of skills for a specific Agent or workspace:

• Activate: Adds all Skills in the Preset to the selected Agent.
• Deactivate: Removes all Skills in the Preset from the selected Agent.

Note: Applying a Preset is a one-time copy operation, not a real-time continuous sync.

Introduced in version 1.0.0, the following management features are available:

• Scenario Management: Create, rename, delete, and switch between different scenarios.
• Sync Configuration: Configure sync modes and enable automatic scenario synchronization on startup.
• Theme Support: Light and dark themes that follow system preferences.

In version 1.23.1 and later, Windows users can use efficient linking modes without needing Administrator privileges or Developer Mode enabled.

If the system cannot create a true symbolic link, Skills Manager will automatically fall back to using a Directory Junction instead of performing a full file copy. Junctions provide real-time synchronization with the central library similar to symlinks but do not require special permissions on NTFS volumes.

Note: If a skill was previously synced using the 'copy' method (due to older versions or WSL paths), you must manually trigger a re-sync or update the skill to switch it to the junction/symlink mode.

If you prefer using a Personal Access Token or require an alternative network setup, you can use the '高级' (Advanced) section in the Backup panel.

• Setup: Provide your PAT in the advanced settings.
• Automation: The application will automatically complete the repository setup.
• Support: A link to create a token with the required permissions is provided within the interface. This is recommended if you encounter network errors during standard GitHub login.