create-skill

A guide for creating Cursor Agent Skills, which are instruction files that teach the coding assistant how to perform a specialised task or workflow.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when defining a new skill, choosing its scope and triggers, deciding where it belongs, or documenting its expected output.
Why use it?
It helps turn repeated project knowledge and procedures into a consistent skill instead of recreating the instructions in every conversation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/xyruscode/ai-sync/create-skill
Any agent
npx skills add XyrusCode/ai-sync --skill create-skill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/XyrusCode/ai-sync

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,232 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 94% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00024 $0.03232
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.01616
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00646
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00323

Measured yesterday against content hash f3df382ea9cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

create-skill scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

94% identical to create-skill — 38 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/create-skill/SKILL.md · 505 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 505 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Creating Skills in Cursor

This skill guides you through creating effective Agent Skills for Cursor. Skills are markdown files that teach the agent how to perform specific tasks: reviewing PRs using team standards, generating commit messages in a preferred format, querying database schemas, or any specialized workflow.

Before You Begin: Gather Requirements

Before creating a skill, gather essential information from the user about:

  1. Purpose and scope: What specific task or workflow should this skill help with?
  2. Target location: Should this be a personal skill (~/.cursor/skills/) or project skill (.cursor/skills/)?
  3. Trigger scenarios: When should the agent automatically apply this skill?
  4. Key domain knowledge: What specialized information does the agent need that it wouldn't already know?
  5. Output format preferences: Are there specific templates, formats, or styles required?
  6. Existing patterns: Are there existing examples or conventions to follow?

Verbatim text from the user

If the user includes exact wording to use in the skill, respect it and use it verbatim in SKILL.md (same words, same order). Do not paraphrase, soften, or expand their copy, and do not add unrequested headings or commentary around it.

Inferring from Context

If you have previous conversation context, infer the skill from what was discussed. You can create skills based on workflows, patterns, or domain knowledge that emerged in the conversation.

Gathering Additional Information

If you need clarification, use the AskQuestion tool when available:

Example AskQuestion usage:
- "Where should this skill be stored?" with options like ["Personal (~/.cursor/skills/)", "Project (.cursor/skills/)"]
- "Should this skill include executable scripts?" with options like ["Yes", "No"]

If the AskQuestion tool is not available, ask these questions conversationally.


Skill File Structure

Directory Layout

Skills are stored as directories containing a SKILL.md file:

Read the full file on GitHub · 505 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 505 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A f3df382ea9cf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

create-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository XyrusCode/ai-sync (2 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 3,232 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 94% identical to create-skill, differing in 38 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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