Manage Agent Skills

Toggle skills across major coding agents

Use the bundled scripts/skillctl.py for deterministic, on-demand management. Never start a daemon or watcher. Discover current skills again on every invocation.

Workflow

1. Run doctor or status before changing anything.
2. Use search to resolve exact skill names.
3. Preview mutations with --dry-run.
4. Apply the requested mutation.
5. Report the platform, affected skills, config or native command used, backup path, and whether a new agent session is required.

powershell

$skillctl = "<skill-directory>\scripts\skillctl.py"
python $skillctl doctor
python $skillctl --platform codex status
python $skillctl --platform all search azure
python $skillctl --platform claude disable deploy --dry-run
python $skillctl --platform claude disable deploy
python $skillctl --platform copilot enable my-skill --dry-run
python $skillctl --platform openclaw disable browser-tools --dry-run
python $skillctl --platform hermes --hermes-scope telegram disable shell-tools --dry-run

Mutations require an explicit --platform codex, --platform claude, or --platform copilot, --platform openclaw, or --platform hermes. Selectors are exact names, group:<name>, path:<path>, or all; partial names are intentionally rejected. Hermes defaults to global scope; pass --hermes-scope <platform> for a platform-specific disable.

Presets

Use a JSON preset file matching references/presets.md:

powershell

python $skillctl --platform codex preset lean --file .\skill-presets.json --dry-run
python $skillctl --platform codex preset lean --file .\skill-presets.json

Safety

• Do not delete, relocate, or rewrite any installed SKILL.md.
• Keep changes scoped to native platform controls.
• Codex edits only its marked TOML block.
• Claude Code edits only skillOverrides in its settings JSON.
• Copilot writes the documented disabledSkills setting and uses copilot skill list --json for native discovery when available.
• OpenClaw delegates mutations to openclaw config set so its JSON5 config is not normalized or hand-edited. Agent allowlists may still restrict a skill.
• Hermes writes only skills.disabled or skills.platform_disabled.<scope> in config.yaml. PyYAML may normalize formatting and comments, so the backup is the lossless recovery copy.
• Create a sibling .manage-agent-skills.bak before changing a config file.
• Protect manage-agent-skills, skill-creator, and plugin-creator from disable-all unless the user explicitly requests --force.
• Explain that Codex, Claude Code, OpenClaw, and Hermes changes may require a new session or gateway restart; Copilot follows its native command behavior.

Read references/platforms.md when platform semantics or support boundaries matter. Read references/presets.md only when creating or applying presets.