Manage skills with the CLI

Skills are reusable instruction packages for agents. The CLI covers installed skills, the public/repository catalog, and your personal skill library.

Warning: Inspect a skill’s SKILL.md and supporting files before installing it. A skill can instruct an agent to use tools and external systems with your authority.

Discover and install

mf skills discover --q review
mf skills install code-review --agent-id agt_xxx
mf skills installed --agent-id agt_xxx

install takes a skill’s name or its id (the github:… id discover prints, or a library skill’s skl_…). A name is matched exactly, ignoring case, in your library and the catalog, and <owner>/<name> (such as anthropics/mcp-builder) takes one repo owner’s. When several skills share a name, the command lists them and installs none; install one as listed. mf skills list is the same as installed.

Discovery is paginated: results arrive one page at a time (up to 100 per page, featured ranking by default; --sort latest ranks by recency). When more results exist the command prints a hint with the cursor to pass as --cursor, and --json output is the page object — items plus a nextCursor that is null on the last page. A repository read for the first time, such as one you just added, is read before the answer; if that takes more than a few seconds, the command says it is still reading it, and its skills appear on a later run.

Install to several agents with:

mf skills install code-review --agent-ids agt_one,agt_two

Installation state is separate from enablement:

• installing — materialization is still running
• installed — the skill is present and its SKILL.md is loadable
• failed — materialization failed; inspect the sanitized reason and retry

Do not treat installing as ready.

Enable, disable, or uninstall

mf skills update usk_xxx --enabled
mf skills update usk_xxx --disabled
mf skills delete usk_xxx --yes

The ID here is the installed user-skill ID returned by skills installed, not the catalog skill ID. Uninstall is irreversible and requires explicit --yes.

Personal library

mf skills library list
mf skills library get skl_xxx
mf skills library create --content-file ./SKILL.md
mf skills library update skl_xxx --content-file ./SKILL.md

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md at its top, and any files its instructions use next to it:

---
name: my-review
description: Review a change for correctness and style.
---
# My review

When asked to review a change, …

create takes the skill’s name from that frontmatter; --name overrides it.

Publish a skill you work on locally with one command. publish creates the library skill from the folder, or, when one of that name exists, updates it and pushes it to the agents that have it installed:

mf skills library publish ./my-review

Hidden files, license files and files over 1 MiB stay out, as they do in an import.

Import from GitHub, a catalog entry, an unlisted share link, a local folder, or a .skill/zip archive:

mf skills library import --url https://github.com/example/skills/tree/main/review
mf skills library import --file ./review
mf skills library import --file ./review.skill
mf skills library import --share https://manyfold.ai/skills/shared/lss_xxx

Supporting files are managed separately:

mf skills library files set skl_xxx \
  --path references/guide.md \
  --content-file ./guide.md
mf skills library files delete skl_xxx skf_xxx

Share, export, and push

mf skills library share skl_xxx
mf skills library export skl_xxx -o ./review.skill
mf skills library push skl_xxx

Share links are unlisted, not private authentication boundaries. Revoke a link when it should no longer import snapshots. push updates agents that already have the library skill installed; inspect per-agent results because one stopped agent does not block the rest.

mf skills repos manages skill repositories and requires admin or api.full access; normal users rarely need it.

See also

• Use the workspace
• Scripting with mf
• CLI command reference