skill-installer 0.1.3

Install Claude Code skills from GitHub

skill-installer

Claude Code supports custom skills — Markdown files that teach Claude how to approach specific tasks (code reviews, standups, debugging workflows, and more). Skills live in a local directory and are picked up automatically when you start a session.

skill-installer is a CLI tool that fetches skills from GitHub and installs them into your skills directory. You point it at a GitHub URL, it clones the repo locally, copies the skill folder, and writes a metadata file so the tool knows where the skill came from. When a skill author pushes an update, one command brings all your skills up to date.

You need this if you want to:

• Install skills shared by others without manually cloning repos and copying folders
• Keep installed skills in sync with their upstream sources
• Manage skills from multiple GitHub repos through a single tool

Setup

pipx (recommended)

pipx install skill-installer

Homebrew

brew tap renekann/skill-installer
brew install skill-installer

pip

pip install skill-installer

Manual (symlink)

git clone https://github.com/renekann/skill-installer.git
chmod +x skill-installer/skill_installer.py
ln -s "$PWD/skill-installer/skill_installer.py" /usr/local/bin/skill-install

Usage

# Install a skill (blob, tree, or raw.githubusercontent.com URL)
skill-install https://github.com/mblode/agent-skills/blob/main/skills/optimise-seo/SKILL.md

# Update all installed skills to latest
skill-install --update-all

# Clear the local git repo cache
skill-install --purge-cache

Configuration

Config file (recommended)

Create ~/.skill-installer/config with KEY=VALUE entries. Lines starting with # are ignored.

SKILL_INSTALL_DIR=~/.claude/skills
SKILL_CACHE_DIR=~/.skill-installer/repos

Environment variables

Env vars take precedence over the config file.

export SKILL_INSTALL_DIR=~/my-skills
skill-install https://github.com/...

Defaults

Variable	Default
SKILL_INSTALL_DIR	~/.claude/skills
SKILL_CACHE_DIR	~/.skill-installer/repos

How it works

1. The GitHub URL is parsed to extract the owner, repo, and skill folder path.
2. The repo is cloned (shallow) into SKILL_CACHE_DIR/{owner}/{repo}/ — or fetched if already cached.
3. The skill folder is copied into SKILL_INSTALL_DIR/{skill-name}/.
4. A .skill-source.json file is written into the skill folder with the source URL, repo, and commit hash.

Multiple skills from the same repo share one cached clone. --update-all runs one git pull per repo, then re-copies all affected skill folders.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• git in PATH
• No additional Python packages required