agent-extension-standards

skilltap

A personal control plane for local agent harnesses.

skilltap manages the marketplaces, plugins, skills, MCP declarations, and instruction files used by your local agent harnesses. It adopts existing configuration, keeps a normalized machine-wide inventory, and reconciles each target through its native lifecycle or documented managed surfaces.

It does not search for skills or recommend plugins. You tell skilltap what you want; skilltap helps install it correctly, keep it updated, and show whether your environment is healthy.

What It Manages

• A typed registry spanning Codex, Claude Code, Factory Droid, Qwen Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Antigravity CLI, Junie, Kimi Code CLI, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Mistral Vibe, Kiro CLI, Amp, Pi, Cursor, Zoo Code, and ZCode.
• Native plugin marketplaces.
• Native and materialized plugins.
• Complete standalone skill directories.
• Git-backed skill updates.
• Global and project instructions.
• Cross-harness compatibility.
• Configuration drift and ownership.
• Optional safe automatic updates.

Native First

skilltap uses native harness commands whenever they exist.

A Claude plugin stays a Claude plugin. A Codex plugin stays a Codex plugin. When the same plugin exists natively for both harnesses, skilltap installs both native distributions.

When no native target exists, skilltap can materialize compatible components into documented load paths. Support is admitted per component and scope. Effectively verified changes apply normally; declaration-managed changes require foreground --yes and remain explicitly effective-unverified. Partial or lossy results are also reported and require explicit approval.

Agent Forward

skilltap is deterministic and non-interactive.

Human-readable output is concise enough for an agent transcript. Inspection and planning commands also support --json. When a user decision is required, output explains the incompatibility and gives the exact next action.

There is no TUI, setup wizard, or separate agent mode.

Read-only status works before configuration exists and creates nothing. A missing config.toml means no harness is enabled; skilltap never infers management policy merely because a registered executable or file surface is present.

For normal human use, ask your agent for the outcome instead of translating it into flags yourself. For example:

Use skilltap to check the health of my enabled agent harnesses.

Use skilltap to sync my global plugins and shared instructions. Show me the plan first, and ask before accepting any partial result.

Use skilltap to install formatter@example-plugins in this project and tell me which selected targets are verified, declaration-managed, or unsupported.

The agent can learn exact syntax from skilltap --help, run read-only status and planning commands, and convey any required decision before mutation.

Quick Start

The native plugin is the primary installation path. Add this repository as a marketplace, then install or enable the plugin in the harness you use:

# Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add nklisch/skilltap --scope user
claude plugin install skilltap@skilltap --scope user

# Codex marketplace
codex plugin marketplace add nklisch/skilltap
codex plugin add skilltap@skilltap

Let skilltap verify the binary and harness setup:

skilltap bootstrap

Need the standalone binary directly? Use the online installer after the plugin instructions:

curl -fsSL https://skilltap.dev/install.sh | sh

The plugin path and online installer report binary availability separately from Claude/Codex harness setup. A missing harness or unsupported native plugin lifecycle is an explicit next action, not a reason to write a native cache. Homebrew installs the binary only (brew install nklisch/skilltap/skilltap); run skilltap bootstrap afterward when you want the plugin/skill setup.

Enable the harnesses you want skilltap to manage:

skilltap harness enable codex
skilltap harness enable claude

Adopt their existing global configuration:

skilltap adopt

Establish shared global instructions:

skilltap instructions setup

This uses ~/AGENTS.md as the canonical global file and creates the required native harness bridges.

Inspect the complete managed computer:

skilltap status --all-scopes

Preview and reconcile desired state:

skilltap plan --all-scopes
skilltap sync --all-scopes

Marketplaces and Plugins

Register an explicit marketplace:

skilltap marketplace add example/agent-plugins

Install an exact plugin:

skilltap plugin install formatter@example-plugins

Target one harness when needed:

skilltap plugin install formatter@example-plugins --target claude

skilltap lists registered marketplaces and installed plugins. It does not browse or search marketplace catalogs.

Standalone Skills

A skill is a complete directory with SKILL.md at its root:

commit-helper/
├── SKILL.md
├── scripts/
├── references/
└── templates/

Install a top-level skill directory:

skilltap skill install ./commit-helper

Install a skill from an explicit repository subdirectory:

skilltap skill install https://github.com/example/agent-tools \
  --path skills/commit-helper

The whole directory is installed and tracked. For Git-backed skills, skilltap records the resolved commit SHA and detects updates when that SHA changes.

Global and Project Scope

Commands operate globally unless project scope is requested:

# Global
skilltap plugin install formatter@example-plugins

# Project containing the current directory
skilltap plugin install formatter@example-plugins --project

# Another project
skilltap plugin install formatter@example-plugins --project ~/src/my-app

# Every managed scope
skilltap status --all-scopes

--target selects harnesses. Scope selects where the resource applies. They can be combined:

skilltap sync --project --target claude

skilltap stores its own state outside repositories. It writes project files only when they are native harness resources or instruction files named in the reconciliation plan.

Internally, every managed resource instance has a logical ID plus one concrete scope. That exact pair is its ResourceKey, so the same plugin or skill can exist independently in global scope and in multiple projects without colliding. Component selectors resolve within the scopes selected by the command and every resulting operation retains the exact scoped key.

Instructions

Global instructions use:

~/AGENTS.md

Native global bridges normally use:

${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/AGENTS.md -> ~/AGENTS.md
~/.claude/CLAUDE.md -> ~/AGENTS.md

Project instructions use:

<project>/AGENTS.md
<project>/CLAUDE.md -> AGENTS.md

Existing user-authored files are preserved. Conflicting content is reported for review rather than overwritten.

Project-shared Claude declarations remain visible to status because they can affect the effective environment. They are not adoptable into skilltap's personal project scope; skilltap does not turn a repository's shared declaration into personal desired state.

Compatibility

Resources are classified as:

• Native.
• Faithfully equivalent.
• Materializable.
• Partial.
• Unsupported.

Safe native and faithful changes can proceed normally. A partial foreground operation requires --yes:

skilltap plugin install deploy@claude-tools --target codex --yes

Optional --include and --exclude selectors control individual components.

--yes acknowledges the exact reported partial or effective-unverified result. It does not claim the harness loaded a declaration and does not override unsupported components or scopes, authentication, trust, local drift, conflicts, or invalid configuration.

Mutation support comes only from capability profiles compiled into s