skill-cli

A high-performance AI Agent Skill Engine. Stores, searches, and fetches Markdown skills dynamically via an embedded SQLite FTS5 database to save context tokens.

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skill-cli

A high-performance, open-source Rust AI Agent Skill Engine.

skill-cli is a single statically-linked binary that acts as a centralized skill store for AI agents and human developers. It provides:

A CLI for syncing, searching, and managing skills stored in a local SQLite database.
An MCP server (over stdio, JSON-RPC 2.0) that exposes clean, token-efficient tools for LLMs and agents to search, fetch, and update skills without clogging context windows.

Features

⚡ Millisecond FTS5 search — BM25-ranked full-text search powered by SQLite's built-in FTS5 engine, no external search infrastructure required.
🗄️ Embedded SQLite — Zero-config, single-file database (~/.config/skills/skills.db). Statically compiled, no system SQLite installation needed.
🤖 MCP-native — Implements the Model Context Protocol (2024-11-05) over stdio. Compatible with Claude Desktop, Antigravity, and any MCP host.
📁 Filesystem sync — Import any directory of .md files with YAML frontmatter in one command.
🦀 Pure Rust — Single binary, no runtime, no daemon, no network service to manage.

Quick Start

Install

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JohnnytheShark/skill-cli/main/install.ps1 | iex

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JohnnytheShark/skill-cli/main/install.sh | bash

The binary is installed to ~/.skill-cli/bin/ and added to your PATH automatically. Restart your terminal after installing, then verify:

skill-cli --version

Build from Source (advanced): Requires the Rust toolchain.
git clone https://github.com/JohnnytheShark/skill-cli.git
cd skill-cli
cargo build --release

Sync skills from a directory

skill-cli sync --dir ./my-skills

Each .md file becomes a skill. Frontmatter provides the name and description:

---
name: Git Bisect
description: Use binary search to find the commit that introduced a bug
---

# Git Bisect
...

Search from the terminal

skill-cli search "async runtime"
skill-cli list

Run the MCP server

skill-cli serve

Point any MCP-compatible agent at this binary and it will expose three tool groups: skills_*, agents_*, and collections_*.

CLI Reference

Command	Description
`skill-cli serve`	Start the MCP JSON-RPC 2.0 server over stdio
`skill-cli sync --dir <PATH> [--prune]`	Sync `.md` files in a directory into SQLite (optional `--prune` deletes removed files)
`skill-cli search <QUERY> [--collection <NAME>]`	Full-text search the skill index
`skill-cli list`	List all indexed skills
`skill-cli remove <ID>`	Delete a single skill by ID
`skill-cli remove-bulk <ID...>`	Delete multiple skills by ID
`skill-cli purge --yes`	Delete all skills from the database and rebuild FTS index
`skill-cli export --dir <PATH> [--ids ...] [--query ...]`	Export skills as sync-compatible `.md` files

MCP Tools

Tool	Input	Output
`skills_search`	`{ "query": "...", "collection": "...", "limit": 5 }`	Array of `{ id, name, description }` metadata
`skills_fetch`	`{ "id": "..." }`	Raw Markdown content string
`skills_upsert`	`{ "id", "name", "description", "content", "collections" }`	`{ "status": "success", "id": "..." }`
`skills_delete`	`{ "id": "..." }`	`{ "status": "success", "deleted": bool, "id": "..." }`
`skills_delete_bulk`	`{ "ids": ["..."] }`	`{ "status": "success", "deleted": number }`
`skills_export`	`{ "ids"?: [...], "query"?: "...", "collection"?: "...", "limit"?: 200 }`	JSON array of complete `{ id, name, description, content }` objects

Connecting to an Agent

Add to your mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "skill-engine": {
      "command": "skill-cli",
      "args": ["serve"]
    }
  }
}

Documentation

Full Diátaxis documentation is in the docs/ directory:

Type	Contents
Tutorial	Step-by-step introduction for new users
How-to Guides	Practical guides for specific tasks
Reference	Complete CLI, MCP, schema, and format specs
Explanation	Architecture, design decisions, and concepts

Development

cargo check      # Verify compilation
cargo clippy     # Lint
cargo test       # Run unit tests
cargo build --release  # Optimised build

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

See NOTICE for required attribution notices.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.