Using Cursor skills: how agent skills work and which to trust

What are Cursor skills?

Cursor skills are folders containing a SKILL.md that the Cursor agent applies when a task fits the skill’s description. Cursor reads them from .agents/skills/ and .cursor/skills/ in your project and from ~/.agents/skills/ and ~/.cursor/skills/ for all projects. The shortest install is npx skills add owner/repo -a cursor.

They follow the open Agent Skills format, so one skill can serve Cursor, Claude Code and Codex. Of the 195 repositories we have reviewed, 96 say they support Cursor.

Where Cursor looks for agent skills

The Cursor skills docs say Cursor loads skills at startup from these folders:

• project: .agents/skills/ and .cursor/skills/
• user: ~/.agents/skills/ and ~/.cursor/skills/
• for compatibility: .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/, ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.codex/skills/

Skill folders can be nested in category subfolders. A .cursor/skills/ or .agents/skills/ folder inside a repo subdirectory is found too, and its skills apply only to files under that directory. Because of the compatibility folders, skills you already installed for Claude Code or Codex may show up in Cursor without any copying.

The Cursor SKILL.md

Two frontmatter fields are required. name takes lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens and has to match the parent folder. description says what the skill does and when to use it. Optional fields are:

• paths: glob patterns that limit when the skill is surfaced. The older globs still works.
• disable-model-invocation: when true, the skill runs only if you call it.
• icon and color, for the badge when the skill is used as a Custom Mode.
• metadata: free-form key-value pairs.

A skill can also include scripts/ (code the agent can run), references/ (docs loaded on demand) and assets/ (templates and data). Cursor’s advice is to keep SKILL.md short and move detail into those folders. Our SKILL.md format guide goes through the same structure.

Using skills in Cursor

Cursor applies a skill automatically when it judges the skill relevant. To force it, type / in Agent chat and pick the skill, which attaches it to that one message. To keep one on for a whole session, use it as a Custom Mode. Setting disable-model-invocation: true turns a skill into a pure slash command.

Skills in a monorepo

Skills in nested project directories apply only to files under that directory, so a package in a monorepo can have its own .cursor/skills/ or .agents/skills/ without affecting the rest. The paths field narrows a skill further by glob. Together they keep a frontend skill from surfacing while the agent works in a backend package.

Rules versus skills

Cursor’s built-in /migrate-to-skills command, added in Cursor 2.4, converts “Apply Intelligently” rules (no alwaysApply, no globs) into skills, and turns user and workspace slash commands into skills with disable-model-invocation: true. Rules marked alwaysApply: true, rules with globs, and user rules are not migrated. If a rule has to apply to every request, it stays a rule. A skill is better for a procedure the agent needs only sometimes.

Installing skills from GitHub

The docs say skills aren’t imported one at a time. You package them in a plugin and publish it through a marketplace: import a repository through Customize with From GitHub Repository (the repo needs .cursor-plugin/marketplace.json), or add a team marketplace and install the plugin. For a single skill, copying the folder into .cursor/skills/ or running the skills CLI works as well, since that path is on Cursor’s list.

What a Cursor skill can reach

A skill with a scripts/ folder asks the agent to run code on your machine, and a skill can also instruct the agent to pull in outside text. Of the 96 repositories that list Cursor, 4 had no issues in our review, 55 are marked “review before installing” and 37 “broad access”. Two examples:

• vercel-labs/agent-skills is first-party and heavily installed, but two of its review skills fetch their rules from an unpinned GitHub branch on every run, and the deploy skills touch your Vercel account. Verdict: install, marked “broad access”.
• coreyhaines31/marketingskills has 52 skills with references and evals. Keep ad-account access read-only. Verdict: install.

Our best skills page ranks the whole directory, and the security checklist applies to Cursor unchanged. The pack list below is filtered to repositories that mention Cursor.