napoln

A package manager for agent skills. Install from any git repo, upgrade without losing your customizations, and manage skills across every agent you use.

"I don't even have any good skills. You know, like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills."

• Multi-agent. One command places skills into Claude Code, Gemini CLI, pi, Codex, and Cursor.
• Versioned upgrades. Three-way merge on upgrade preserves your local customizations.
• Decentralized. Any git repo is a valid source. No registry required.
• Content-addressed. Every stored version has a deterministic SHA-256 hash.
• Zero-copy placement. Reflink (copy-on-write) on APFS and btrfs. Full copy fallback elsewhere.
• Self-describing. A bundled skill teaches your agents how to use napoln.

Install

Requires Python 3.11+. napoln is published on PyPI.

Run without installing:

uvx napoln add owner/repo

Or install globally:

uv tool install napoln    # recommended
pipx install napoln       # alternative
pip install napoln        # plain pip

First Run

On first run, napoln installs its bundled management skill so your agents know how to use it. After that, your agents can find and install new capabilities without prompting you for CLI commands.

Agents prefer uvx napoln so they never hit PATH issues. The bundled skill is automatically installed alongside your first skill, so it works out of the box.

Quick Start

napoln add owner/repo --all

napoln clones the repo, discovers all skills, and places them in every detected agent's skill directory:

✓ Placed 'code-review' in ~/.claude/skills/code-review (clone)
✓ Placed 'code-review' in ~/.agents/skills/code-review (clone)
✓ Placed 'code-review' in ~/.cursor/skills/code-review (clone)
✓ Added 'code-review' v1.2.0

Install a specific skill, pin a version, or use a local path:

napoln add owner/repo --skill code-review   # specific skill by name
napoln add owner/repo@v1.2.0               # pinned to a tag
napoln add owner/repo/team-a/skills --all   # every skill under a subdirectory
napoln add ./my-local-skill                 # local directory

A path after owner/repo scopes the install. If it points at a single skill, that skill is installed. If it points at a directory of skills (a bundle in a monorepo), --all, --skill, and the picker only see skills under that directory.

Multi-skill repos show an interactive picker when no --skill or --all flag is given:

napoln add owner/repo
# ? Select skills to install:
# ❯ ◯ code-review  Review pull requests for quality and correctness
#   ◯ testing       Generate and improve test coverage
#   ◯ rust          Rust-specific development patterns

Customize a skill, then upgrade without losing your changes:

napoln upgrade code-review
# ✓ Merged 'code-review' at ~/.claude/skills/code-review (2 files updated)

Remove one or more skills at once:

napoln remove design-audit design-frontend design-preflight

Remove all skills from a specific repository:

napoln remove --from-source raiderrobert/flow

Combine explicit names with --from-source filter:

napoln remove --from-source raiderrobert/flow design-audit

Commands

napoln add <source>           Install skills from a git repo or local path
napoln remove <name>...       Remove one or more skills
napoln remove --from-source  Remove all skills from a specific repository
napoln upgrade [<name>]       Upgrade one or all skills
napoln list                   Show installed skills and where they are placed
napoln install                Restore skill placements from manifests
napoln init [<name>]          Scaffold a new SKILL.md
napoln config                 View configuration and run housekeeping

All mutating commands support --dry-run. Use -p for project scope on any command.

Supported Agents

Gemini CLI, pi, and Codex share ~/.agents/skills/ — one placement serves all three.

One SKILL.md for every agent

A skill is a single SKILL.md file. Every supported agent reads the same file; napoln does not fork or transform it per agent. Agent-specific frontmatter fields are optional, and each agent ignores the fields it does not understand. Skill authors should keep one canonical SKILL.md per skill rather than maintaining per-agent variants.

Team Workflow

Install with --project and commit the manifest:

napoln add owner/repo --skill code-review --project
# Creates .napoln/manifest.toml  (commit this)
# Places into .claude/skills/    (gitignore these)

Teammates clone and run:

napoln install
# ✓ Synced 3 project skills (3 restored)

napoln install syncs both global and project manifests automatically.

Documentation

• ARCHITECTURE.md — Architecture decisions and prior art analysis
• CONTRIBUTING.md — Development setup, testing, how to add commands and agents

License

MIT