manage-skills: Skill for Claude Code

manage-skills — Hardlink-Based Skill Sharing

CLI tool for sharing whole skill directories across projects via hardlinks. Config lives in ~/.manage-skills/.

⚠️ Editing any file in a linked skill? Use cat > file — NOT the Edit/Write tools. They rewrite-and-replace → new inode → silently breaks the hardlink to every other project. Full rules + repair in Editing hardlinked skills below.

What gets linked: the directory

A skill is a directory, and the whole directory is what gets hardlinked — SKILL.md, references/, templates/, scripts/, every regular file in it. Each one shares an inode with its counterpart in the source, subdirectories included.

SKILL.md is not the linked thing. It is the file that identifies a directory as a skill, which is why discovery keys on it and why a target definition names it (claude:.claude/skills:SKILL.md). It gets linked exactly like every other file in the directory, with no special status once linking starts.

This matters for the rule below: it applies to every file in the skill, not just the entry file. A references/api.md detaches from its source exactly the way a SKILL.md does, and just as silently.

A project linked by an older version holds only its SKILL.md. manage-skills sync upgrades it in place — the rest of the directory is hardlinked in, subdirectories and all. No unlink, no flag.

Commands

manage-skills                        # Interactive mode (fzf or numbered menu)
manage-skills list                   # Show all skills with status
manage-skills locations              # Where skills come from, per source
manage-skills link <skill>...        # Hardlink skills into current project
manage-skills unlink <skill>...      # Remove skills from current project
manage-skills unlink <skill> --force # …even if it holds files no source has
manage-skills sync                   # Re-hardlink stale copies (keeps diverged ones)
manage-skills sync --force           # …and relink the diverged ones too
manage-skills update [name...]       # Pull remote sources (--check only reports)
manage-skills package [dir]          # Make a skill directory installable by others
manage-skills check                  # Verify hardlink integrity
manage-skills sources                # List source directories
manage-skills sources add <dir|repo|owner> [label]  # Add a source: directory,
                                     #   repo, or GitHub owner (their skills repo)
manage-skills sources remove <dir>   # Remove a skill source
manage-skills targets                # List configured targets
manage-skills targets add <n> <p> <f> # Add target (name:path:file)
manage-skills self                   # Where this install and its own skills live
manage-skills self install           # Register the shipped skills as a source
manage-skills self update            # Update the script and the shipped skills
manage-skills init                   # Create ~/.manage-skills/ config