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How to Install Cursor Skills

Cursor has no install command. What it has is eight directories it scans and five different ways to put a skill into one of them, including one that costs nothing if you already run Claude Code or Codex.

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Cursor doesn't have an install command the way Hermes Agent or OpenClaw do. Installing a skill means getting a SKILL.md file into one of the eight directories Cursor scans — and there are five real ways to do that.

The fastest one: you may already be done

If you already use Claude Code or Codex and have skills in ~/.claude/skills/, .claude/skills/, ~/.codex/skills/, or .codex/skills/, Cursor reads those directories directly. Nothing to copy, no conversion, no extra step. Open Cursor and they're already there.

This only works one direction automatically — Claude Code and Codex don't read Cursor's directories back. If you want a skill to go the other way, write it into .agents/skills/ instead, which all three read natively (Cursor as one of its four native roots, Codex and OpenClaw as their current user/repo convention).

1. Write the file by hand

For anything project-specific:

mkdir -p .cursor/skills/deploy-staging

# .cursor/skills/deploy-staging/SKILL.md
---
name: deploy-staging
description: Deploys the current branch to the staging environment.
---

1. Run the test suite.
2. Build the staging bundle.
3. Push to the staging deploy target.

For something personal, across every project:

mkdir -p ~/.cursor/skills/deploy-staging

Use .agents/skills/ or ~/.agents/skills/ instead of the .cursor/ variants if you want Codex or OpenClaw to pick up the same file without a second copy.

name must match the parent folder name exactly — that's a hard requirement, not a convention.

2. Import from GitHub

Cursor can pull a skill straight from a repository. The flow is nested inside the Rules UI, which is easy to miss if you're specifically looking for a "skills" menu:

  1. Open Customize in the sidebar
  2. Go to Rules and click Add Rule
  3. Select Remote Rule (Github)
  4. Enter the GitHub repository URL

This is the route for pulling in a single skill from a community repository without cloning it yourself.

3. npx skills — the cross-agent installer

vercel-labs/skills (MIT, third-party — not a Cursor product) is a CLI for installing SKILL.md files across agents, Cursor included:

npx skills add <owner/repo> -a cursor

Useful specifically when you're pulling a skill from a repository that isn't organised the way Cursor expects, or when you want to install the same skill into several agents in one command by repeating -a.

4. The plugin marketplace

Skills can also arrive bundled inside a Cursor Plugin — a package that can carry rules, skills, MCP servers, and more together.

  1. Browse cursor.com/marketplace or open Customize in the sidebar
  2. Find the plugin you want
  3. Select Install, and choose a project or user scope

Marketplace plugins go through Cursor's own manual review before listing. That's meaningfully different from a raw GitHub import — see the best Cursor skills for what that review does and doesn't tell you, and note that plenty of marketplace plugins ship MCP servers with no skills in them at all, so "it's in the marketplace" doesn't by itself mean "it's a skill."

5. Convert what you already have

If the "skill" you want already exists as a Cursor rule or slash command, don't write it from scratch — run /migrate-to-skills and let Cursor convert it. See Cursor skills vs rules for exactly which of your rules qualify.

Which route for which situation

Situation Use
A quick project-specific procedure Hand-written file in .cursor/skills/
Something personal, used everywhere Hand-written file in ~/.cursor/skills/
Want it shared with Codex or OpenClaw too .agents/skills/ or ~/.agents/skills/
You already run Claude Code or Codex with skills Nothing — check ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.codex/skills/ first
Pulling one skill from a GitHub repo Remote Rule (GitHub) import
Installing across several agents at once npx skills add <owner/repo> -a cursor
Want the skill vetted before it lands Cursor Marketplace
An existing rule or command should have been a skill /migrate-to-skills

Verifying it worked

Type / in Agent chat and search for the skill's name. If it doesn't appear, check, in order: the directory is one of the eight Cursor actually scans, name in the frontmatter matches the folder name exactly, and the YAML frontmatter parses (a missing closing --- is the most common failure).

Cursor's documentation doesn't state whether a restart or reload is required after adding a file by hand, and we haven't tested it ourselves.

Caveats

  • We have not run Cursor or performed any of these installs ourselves. Steps are taken directly from Cursor's documentation and, for npx skills, from the tool's own repository.
  • npx skills is a third-party tool (Vercel Labs, MIT-licensed), not a Cursor product — presented as such, not implied to be official.
  • Marketplace review criteria are not published in detail; "manually reviewed" is Cursor's own description of the process, not independently audited by us.

Sources

Elsewhere in the Cursor guide

  1. 01Cursor Skills: The Practical GuideAll eight directories Cursor loads skills from, and the two frontmatter fields that only exist here.
  2. 02Cursor Skills vs RulesCursor's own migration tool defines which rules should have been skills. Here's what it converts, and what it leaves alone.
  3. 04The Best Cursor SkillsThe 19 already installed, the reviewed marketplace, and the test for whether an outside skill will work here.