skill tutorial · agent
Workshop skills via npx skills
The npx skills crowd-sourced installer popularized the one-command install: pull a skill directory from a registry or repo, drop it into the agents you use. WorkshopSkill's bundles are the same unit — one named directory with SKILL.md inside — so the two fit cleanly.
What the installer actually does
It resolves a skill name, copies the directory into every agent's skills path it knows (~/.claude/skills, ~/.codex/skills, …), and records what installed where. Conceptually: a package manager for markdown-with-frontmatter skills. It does not transform the skill — which is why any folder that ships in the convention works.
WorkshopSkill's contract with installers
Each activity publishes exactly what such tools expect:
the unit an installer copies
blind-portrait/ SKILL.md # name + description + metadata + commands manifest.json # version, updated, per-file sha256 ...printables # referenced by name inside SKILL.md One command, no installer needed: curl -LO https://workshopskill.com/en/activities/blind-portrait/files/blind-portrait.zip unzip blind-portrait.zip
Self-hosting a registry for your own drawer
Training teams that want npx skills add my-org/blind-portrait-style installs: mirror the bundles into a GitHub repo (one directory per skill is the layout registries read) and point the installer at the repo. The site's own index — skills.json — carries names, descriptions, bundle URLs and checksums, which is everything a registry needs to seed.
When not to use a registry
- One session, three files: curl beats tooling — no npm cache, no Node requirement.
- Air-gapped rooms: the zip is the offline artifact; the registry adds a network hop.
- Auditability: a bundle's manifest hashes verify byte-for-byte; a registry install verifies whatever the registry shipped today.
keep going
questions
Is WorkshopSkill on a public registry?
The site is the registry: skills.json plus one zip per skill. Third-party registries can index it; the curl path is the canonical install.
Do registry-installed skills auto-update?
No auto-update is the honest answer everywhere in this family — check metadata.updated against skills.json, or diff the per-file hashes in manifest.json.
Which agents does npx skills support?
The major skills-directory loaders (Claude Code, Codex and friends); the per-agent walkthroughs here cover each one's exact path.