Kipt

The find-skills skill: let your agent find and install skills

The find skills skill from Vercel teaches your agent to search skills.sh, vet results and install skills with the skills CLI. What it does and how to install.

By the Kipt team · Updated 23 October 2026

Source: vercel-labs/skills · Maintainer: Vercel · License: MIT · Checked: 23 October 2026

What is the find-skills skill?

The find-skills skill turns your agent into its own skill scout: when you ask "how do I do X" or "is there a skill for X," it searches the open skills ecosystem, checks that the results are trustworthy, and offers to install the right one with the skills CLI. It is for anyone using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent who wants to stop hunting for skills by hand. If you install only one skill, this is a strong candidate, because it helps you find the rest.

Its official description in the SKILL.md reads: "Helps users discover and install agent skills when they ask questions like "how do I do X", "find a skill for X", "is there a skill that can...", or express interest in extending capabilities. This skill should be used when the user is looking for functionality that might exist as an installable skill."

It lives in Vercel's vercel-labs/skills repo, the same repo as the skills CLI, which had about 36,000 GitHub stars when checked. Its skills.sh page showed 4.0M installs on 23 October 2026.

What does the find-skills skill do?

The SKILL.md lists when the agent should use it: you ask "how do I do X" where X is a common task, you say "find a skill for X," you ask whether it can do something specialized, you want to extend what the agent can do, you are looking for tools, templates or workflows, or you wish you had help in an area like design, testing or deployment.

It then gives the agent a six-step routine:

  1. Understand the need. Work out the domain (React, testing, design), the specific task, and whether it is common enough that a skill probably exists.
  2. Check the leaderboard first. Look at the skills.sh leaderboard, which ranks skills by total installs, before searching.
  3. Search. Run npx skills find [query], for example npx skills find react performance or npx skills find changelog.
  4. Verify quality. Don't recommend on search results alone. Prefer 1K+ installs and be careful under 100, favor official sources such as vercel-labs, anthropics and microsoft, and be skeptical of repos with fewer than 100 stars.
  5. Present options. Give the skill's name and purpose, its install count and source, the install command, and a skills.sh link.
  6. Offer to install. If you say yes, the agent runs the install itself.

If nothing fits, the skill tells the agent to say so, help with the task directly, and suggest you create your own skill with npx skills init.

What are the skills CLI commands it uses?

The SKILL.md names three key commands, and the skills CLI reference documents them:

npx skills find [query] [--owner <owner>]
npx skills add <package>
npx skills update

When you agree to an install, the skill uses this form, where -g installs at user level and -y skips confirmation prompts:

npx skills add <owner/repo@skill> -g -y

The SKILL.md also includes a table of example search terms by category (web development, testing, DevOps, documentation, code quality, design, productivity) and tips such as using specific keywords and trying synonyms when a search comes back empty.

What is in the folder?

Just one file: skills/find-skills/SKILL.md. There are no scripts; all the work happens through the skills CLI, which npx downloads on demand. The repo's MIT license covers it.

How do you install the find-skills skill?

Use the command from its skills.sh page:

npx skills add https://github.com/vercel-labs/skills --skill find-skills

Per the vercel-labs/skills README, the CLI needs Node.js 22.20 or later and installs into the current project by default; add -g to make the skill available in every project. Add -a claude-code to target Claude Code, which puts the folder in .claude/skills/find-skills/ for a project or ~/.claude/skills/find-skills/ globally. Because this skill is useful everywhere, a global install makes sense:

npx skills add https://github.com/vercel-labs/skills --skill find-skills -g -a claude-code

Codex and Cursor read the same SKILL.md format, and the CLI supports both; see Codex skills and Cursor skills. You can also copy the folder by hand into a skills directory, as Claude Code's skills docs describe. This skill is built for agents that can run shell commands; it has little to do in the Claude.ai app, where it couldn't run the CLI on your machine.

How do you use it?

Talk to your agent as you normally would. Some prompts that fit:

  • "Is there a skill for writing changelogs from git history?"
  • "How do I make my Next.js app faster? Check if there's a skill for that first."
  • "Find a well-maintained skill for Playwright end-to-end testing and show me the install count."
  • "Search skills from the anthropics owner for document processing."
  • "I keep writing the same PR review checklist. Is there a skill, or should we make one?"

Requirements

  • Node.js 22.20 or later for npx skills, per the CLI README.
  • Network access to reach skills.sh, GitHub and npm.
  • An agent with shell access so it can run npx skills find and npx skills add.

Tips and limits

  • Installs are a signal, not a guarantee. The skill's own rules lean on install counts, stars and source reputation. Those cut down on junk but don't prove a skill is safe. Skills can contain scripts, so read a SKILL.md before you approve an install.
  • Watch the -y flag. The suggested command skips the CLI's prompts. Your yes to the agent is the only checkpoint, so make it count.
  • Project or global. The skill installs with -g by default. If you want a skill only in one repo, ask the agent to drop -g.
  • Telemetry. The CLI README says it collects anonymous usage data; set DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 to turn that off along with security-audit requests.
  • Audits on skills.sh. Skill pages on skills.sh list third-party security audit results; for find-skills they showed two passes and one warning when checked. Look at them for any skill the agent suggests.
  • Examples age. The SKILL.md's sample skills and install counts are illustrations written into the file; the live leaderboard is the current source.

Save it in your Kipt library

Once find-skills turns up skills you like, Kipt gives them a permanent home. Open Skills in Kipt and paste a skill's GitHub folder link into the import box; Kipt reads the SKILL.md and its files, and for a repo with many skills it shows a list to pick from. You can also drop the folder or a .zip. Your skills live in your own private GitHub repo and install into Claude Code or Codex with one command:

npx skills add https://github.com/<you>/<repo>.git --all -g

Similar skills

Questions

What is the find-skills skill?

It is an Agent Skill from Vercel, kept in the vercel-labs/skills repo next to the skills CLI. When you ask your agent how to do something or whether a skill exists for it, the skill tells the agent to check the skills.sh leaderboard, search with npx skills find, vet the results and offer to install the best one.

How do I install the find-skills skill?

Run npx skills add https://github.com/vercel-labs/skills --skill find-skills, the command shown on its skills.sh page. Add -g to install it for all projects and -a claude-code to target Claude Code. The skills CLI needs Node.js 22.20 or later.

Does find-skills install skills without asking?

Its instructions tell the agent to present options first and install only if you want to proceed. The install command it suggests uses -y, which skips the CLI's confirmation prompts, so the agent's question to you is the real checkpoint. Read what it proposes before you agree.

How does find-skills decide which skills to recommend?

The SKILL.md tells the agent not to recommend a skill from search results alone. It should prefer skills with 1K or more installs, be cautious under 100, trust official sources such as vercel-labs, anthropics and microsoft more than unknown authors, and be skeptical of repos with fewer than 100 GitHub stars.

Does find-skills work with Codex and Cursor?

Yes. It is a standard SKILL.md, and the skills CLI it relies on supports Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and many other agents. The agent just needs to be able to run shell commands like npx.

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