Managing Agent Skills

Agent Skills provide Gemini CLI with specialized expertise on demand. This guide covers advanced management techniques, including using slash commands, terminal utilities, and understanding discovery tiers.

Discovery tiers

Gemini CLI discovers skills from several locations, following a specific order of precedence (lowest to highest):

1. Built-in Skills: Included with Gemini CLI and always available.
2. Extension Skills: Bundled within extensions.
3. User Skills: Located in ~/.gemini/skills/ or the ~/.agents/skills/ alias. These are available across all your projects.
4. Workspace Skills: Located in .gemini/skills/ or the .agents/skills/ alias within your current directory. These are project-specific.

Tip: If multiple skills share the same name, the version from the higher-precedence location is used.

In-session management

Use the /skills slash command during an interactive session to manage your available expertise.

• List skills: /skills list (shows discovered skills).
  • Use /skills list all to include internal built-in skills.
  • Use /skills list nodesc to hide descriptions.
• Reload skills: /skills reload (or /skills refresh) to scan for new or modified skills without restarting the CLI.
• Toggle status:
  • /skills disable <name>: Prevents a skill from being triggered.
  • /skills enable <name>: Re-enables a disabled skill.
• Link local skills: /skills link <path> [--scope user|workspace] to immediately use a skill you are developing.

Terminal utilities

The gemini skills command provides management utilities directly from your system shell.

Install a skill

To install a skill from a remote repository or a local .skill package:

gemini skills install https://github.com/user/my-awesome-skill

By default, this installs to your user profile. Use --scope workspace to install it only for the current project.

Link for development

If you are developing a skill, use the link command to create a reference to your local directory:

gemini skills link ./path/to/my-skill

Uninstall a skill

To completely remove an installed or linked skill:

gemini skills uninstall <name>

Security and consent

Agent Skills can execute scripts and access your files. To protect your environment:

1. Installation consent: When installing from a remote URL, you will be asked to confirm the source.
2. Activation consent: Every time a skill is triggered during a session, the agent must ask for permission to activate it and gain access to its resources.

Next steps

• Get started with Agent Skills: A walkthrough for creating your first skill.
• Creating Agent Skills: Detailed guide on bundling scripts and assets.
• Skill best practices: Strategies for building reliable expertise.