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addyosmani/agent-skills · 116.8k stars · Beginner · 10 min · 2026-11-13

Install and use addyosmani/agent-skills

A pack of 25 engineering skills, 9 slash commands and 4 reviewer personas that walks an AI coding agent from spec to ship with verification at every step.

TL;DR

agent-skills packages the habits of senior engineers (spec first, small slices, tests as proof, review, safe shipping) as skills your coding agent loads on demand. Install it with one npx command or as a plugin, then drive it with /spec, /plan, /build, /test, /review and /ship.

Why this repo matters

Agents tend to skip the boring parts: they assume requirements, build too much, and call code done because it "seems right". The README describes skills as the "workflows, quality gates, and best practices that senior engineers use", packaged so agents follow them consistently across every phase of development. It is MIT licensed and covers define, plan, build, verify, review and ship.

Best practices

  • Spec before code: start non-trivial work with /spec, and ask for /plan to get small, atomic tasks (README command table).
  • Build one slice at a time; every task is test-driven (red, then green) and committed individually (commands/build.toml).
  • Treat "seems right" as not done: the lifecycle skills end with a Verification checklist, and the meta-skill states the shared rule (skills/using-agent-skills/SKILL.md).
  • Let skills trigger by description: designing an API activates api-and-interface-design, building UI activates frontend-ui-engineering (README).
  • Install the whole repo when skills link to shared checklists, because a per-skill npx install does not copy references/ (README note).
  • Keep orchestration flat: personas report back, and commands or you decide what runs next (AGENTS.md).

How-to

Where do I start?

1. How do I install it?

The fastest path in the README is the open skills CLI, which supports many agents:

npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --list   # browse first
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills          # install all 25 skills

Try it

Install the pack, then take a small feature in one of your own repos through /spec and /plan. Stop after the plan and check that every task has acceptance criteria you could test.

Pitfalls

  • Installing a single skill with npx copies only skills/<name>/, so links to shared references/ checklists will not resolve.
  • /build auto refuses to start without a spec at a known path (such as SPEC.md at the repo root); a README does not count.
  • /build auto also stops if you have unrelated uncommitted changes, so commit, stash, or confirm how it should be handled first.
  • The repo's AGENTS.md configures agents working on the agent-skills repo itself and is not meant to be copied into your own projects.

Next steps