Agent Skills

Agent Skills let you extend Gemini CLI with specialized expertise, procedural workflows, and task-specific resources. Based on the Agent Skills open standard, a "skill" is a self-contained directory that packages instructions and assets into a discoverable capability.

Unlike general context files (GEMINI.md), which provide persistent workspace-wide background, Skills represent on-demand expertise. This lets Gemini CLI maintain a vast library of specialized capabilities—such as security auditing, cloud deployments, or codebase migrations—without cluttering the model's immediate context window.

How it works

The lifecycle of an Agent Skill involves discovery, activation, and conditional resource access.

1. Discovery: At the start of a session, Gemini CLI scans the discovery tiers and injects the name and description of all enabled skills into the system prompt.
2. Activation: When Gemini identifies a task matching a skill's description, it calls the activate_skill tool.
3. Consent: You will see a confirmation prompt in the UI detailing the skill's name, purpose, and the directory path it will gain access to.
4. Injection: Upon your approval:
   • The SKILL.md body and folder structure is added to the conversation history.
   • The skill's directory is added to the agent's allowed file paths, granting it permission to read any bundled assets.
5. Execution: The model proceeds with the specialized expertise active. It is instructed to prioritize the skill's procedural guidance within reason.

Discovery tiers

Gemini CLI discovers skills from several locations, following a specific order of precedence (lowest to highest):

1. Built-in skills: Standard skills included with Gemini CLI that provide foundational capabilities.
2. Extension skills: Skills bundled within installed extensions.
3. User skills: Located in ~/.gemini/skills/ or the ~/.agents/skills/ alias.
4. Workspace skills: Located in .gemini/skills/ or the .agents/skills/ alias. Workspace skills are shared with your team via version control.

Precedence and aliases

If multiple skills share the same name, the version from the higher-precedence location is used. Within the same tier (user or workspace), the .agents/skills/ alias takes precedence over the .gemini/skills/ directory.

The .agents/skills/ alias provides an interoperable path for managing agent-specific expertise that remains compatible across different AI tools.

Key benefits

Agent Skills provide several advantages for managing specialized knowledge and complex workflows.

• Shared expertise: Package complex workflows (like a specific team's PR review process) into a folder that anyone can use.
• Repeatable workflows: Ensure complex multi-step tasks are performed consistently by providing a procedural framework.
• Resource bundling: Include scripts, templates, or example data alongside instructions so the agent has everything it needs.
• Progressive disclosure: Only skill metadata (name and description) is loaded initially. Detailed instructions and resources are only disclosed when the model explicitly activates the skill, saving context tokens.

[!NOTE] /skills disable and /skills enable default to the user scope. Use --scope workspace to manage workspace-specific settings.

To see all available skills in your current session, use the /skills list command.

Managing skills

You can manage Agent Skills through interactive session commands or directly from your terminal.

In an interactive session

Use the /skills slash command to view and manage available expertise:

• /skills list [all] [nodesc]: Shows discovered skills. Use all to include built-in skills and nodesc to hide descriptions.
• /skills link <path> [--scope user|workspace]: Links skills from a local directory.
• /skills disable <name>: Prevents a specific skill from being used.
• /skills enable <name>: Re-enables a disabled skill.
• /skills reload (or /skills refresh): Refreshes the list of discovered skills from all tiers.

From the terminal

The gemini skills command provides management utilities:

# List all discovered skills. Use --all to include built-in skills.
gemini skills list --all

# Install a skill from a Git repository or local directory.
# Use --consent to skip the security confirmation prompt.
gemini skills install https://github.com/user/repo.git --consent

# Uninstall a skill.
gemini skills uninstall my-skill --scope workspace

Command options

The skill management commands support several global and command-specific options.

• --scope: Either user (global, default) or workspace (local to the project).
• --path: The sub-directory within a Git repository containing the skill.
• --consent: Acknowledge security risks and skip the interactive confirmation during installation.

For more details on CLI commands, see the CLI reference.

Next steps

Explore these resources to refine your skills and understand the framework better.

• Get started with Agent Skills: A quick walkthrough of triggering and using skills.
• Creating Agent Skills: Create your first skill and bundle custom logic.
• Using Agent Skills: Learn how to leverage built-in and custom skills.
• Best practices: Learn strategies for building effective skills.