n-skills: A Curated SKILL.md Marketplace That Installs Into Claude Code, Codex and Anything Reading AGENTS.md

The Problem: Every Agent Wants Skills in a Different Directory

The README opens with a list of the formats agents expect. Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md and .claude/skills/. GitHub Copilot reads AGENTS.md and copilot-instructions.md. Codex reads SKILL.md from ~/.codex/skills/. Cursor reads .cursor/rules/*.mdc. Windsurf uses Cascade Rules and Memories. Cline uses .clinerules. Factory/Droid uses .factory/droids/*.md. OpenCode uses .opencode/skill/ and opencode.json. If you write a skill for one of these, you have written it for one of these. Porting means rewriting the file, moving it, and re-testing whatever the agent does with it. n-skills takes the position that the skill body should be a SKILL.md file and the discovery pointer should be AGENTS.md, with openskills acting as the installer that puts the file where a given agent will find it. The audience is developers who already use more than one coding agent, or who have written a skill and do not want to maintain five copies of it. It is not aimed at someone who uses a single agent and is happy with that agent's native skill directory.

How the Marketplace Is Assembled: Native Skills, Synced Skills and sources.yaml

The repository is a collection, not a monolith. The available skills table lists five entries and marks each with a source. orchestration, open-source-maintainer, gastown and zai-cli are marked native, meaning they live in this repository under skills/workflow/, skills/tools/ and similar category directories. dev-browser is attributed to SawyerHood's repository, which means it is mirrored in. The README describes the sync mechanism directly: you keep your skill in your own repository, add an entry to sources.yaml through a pull request, and a GitHub Actions workflow syncs your skill folder daily. Attribution is preserved through a .source.json file. The README also explains why submodules were rejected, saying submodule hell is real and that copying folders is simpler and works with openskills, Claude Code and other tools without special handling. That is a real architectural decision with a real cost: a daily copy means the marketplace's snapshot of an external skill can lag the upstream repository by up to a day, and the synced copy carries no independent review of code changes made upstream. The category taxonomy in the README (workflow, tools, development, productivity, automation, data, documentation) describes where skills go, but the current table only fills workflow, automation and tools.

Installing a Skill: Three Concrete Paths

Claude Code users add the marketplace and then install individual skills. The README gives these commands verbatim: /plugin marketplace add numman-ali/n-skills, followed by /plugin install orchestration@n-skills, /plugin install open-source-maintainer@n-skills, /plugin install gastown@n-skills, /plugin install dev-browser@n-skills or /plugin install zai-cli@n-skills. The @n-skills suffix is the marketplace namespace, and the v1.2.0 release is titled Namespace Fix & Compliance Docs, which suggests the namespace handling was corrected in that release. The universal path uses the openskills CLI: npm i -g openskills, then openskills install numman-ali/n-skills, then openskills sync. The sync step is what writes the discovery file that agents read. Codex users have a third path, $skill-installer https://github.com/numman-ali/n-skills/tree/main/skills/tools/zai-cli, which points at a single skill directory rather than the whole marketplace. Note the asymmetry: the Claude Code and openskills commands operate on the marketplace, while the Codex command takes a direct path to one skill folder. If you want one skill, the Codex form is the narrowest install; if you want the set, use a marketplace-level command.

Where the Curation Claim Meets Its Limit

The README is explicit that this is a curated marketplace and that anyone can request inclusion but only high-quality, real value-add projects will be considered. It lists what is wanted (skills that solve real problems, clean and well-documented code, genuine utility, active maintenance) and what is not (wrapper skills with no real value, abandoned or unmaintained projects, low-effort submissions). The submission process is an issue first, then a pull request following CONTRIBUTING.md if approved. The honest reading is that curation here is a gate on entry, not a guarantee of ongoing review. Once a skill is synced daily from an upstream repository, changes made upstream flow into n-skills without a second approval step, because the mechanism is a scheduled copy. A skill that passed review in January can be updated upstream in March and be distributed through n-skills the next day. That is the trade-off of the no-submodules design, and the README does not describe a diff review or a pinning option. The second limit is size. Five skills are listed, and the README says more are coming soon, which means the marketplace is currently a thin layer. If you need breadth, this is not the source.

The AGENTS.md Bet and What It Implies

The compatibility table splits agents into two groups. Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Factory/Droid and OpenCode are marked native, meaning they read AGENTS.md or SKILL.md directly. Cursor, Windsurf, Cline and Amp Code are marked universal, meaning openskills writes an AGENTS.md file that those agents then read. The README states that AGENTS.md is adopted by more than 20,000 repositories and is natively supported by GitHub Copilot, Google Gemini, OpenAI Codex, Factory Droid and Cursor, citing an InfoQ article from August 2025. Treat that figure as a claim from the README, not something this review verified. The design consequence is that n-skills inherits the limits of AGENTS.md as a discovery convention. An agent that does not read AGENTS.md and has no native skill loader cannot use these skills without a shim. The README's own table shows this is most agents, but not all, and the ones missing from the table are exactly the ones you would have to check yourself. The second consequence is that openskills becomes a required dependency for the universal path. If openskills stops being maintained, the Cursor, Windsurf, Cline and Amp Code rows in that table stop working, and the skills remain usable only in the native agents.

A Real Alternative: Installing Skills Directly from Their Source Repositories

The most direct alternative is to skip the marketplace and install each skill from its own repository. dev-browser is attributed to SawyerHood's dev-browser repository, so a user who wants that skill can clone or install from SawyerHood directly and receive upstream changes the moment they are pushed, rather than waiting for the daily sync. The difference in approach is ownership of the update path: with n-skills you get one install command, one namespace and a category layout, at the cost of an intermediate copy and a curation gate you did not choose. With direct installation you get the upstream repository's own README, its own release cadence and its own issue tracker, and you lose the single command that installs several skills at once. For the four skills marked native, there is no upstream to go to, so the marketplace is the only distribution channel and the comparison does not apply. That split is worth knowing before you decide: check .source.json in a skill directory to see whether a given skill is native or mirrored.

Maintenance, Licensing and What to Verify Before Installing

The repository is Apache-2.0 and the README carries an Apache 2.0 badge linking to the LICENSE file. Apache-2.0 permits commercial use and modification and includes a patent grant, but it also carries notice and attribution obligations, and this is where the mirrored skills deserve attention. A synced skill is third-party code copied into this repository under whatever licence its upstream project uses, and the README says attribution is preserved via .source.json. That file is what you check to find the upstream project and its licence. The n-skills LICENSE covers the repository's own contents; it does not automatically relicense a mirrored skill, and nothing in the supplied material states that every mirrored skill is Apache-2.0. This is a factual gap, not a legal opinion, and it is the first thing to resolve if you plan to redistribute the collection. On maintenance cost, the repository's last push is 2026-09-04 and the most recent release is v1.3.2 from 2026-01-17, titled Official Plugin Structure + Open Source Maintainer, with v1.2.0 and v1.1.0 both from January 2026. Three releases in one month followed by a gap to a later commit suggests the plugin structure stabilized early and subsequent work has been incremental. Upgrading is cheap by design: the Claude Code path re-resolves from the marketplace, and openskills sync rewrites the discovery file, so there is no migration step described for consumers. The cost sits with the maintainer, who owns the sync workflow, the sources.yaml entries and the review of incoming pull requests.

Who Should Install It, and What to Check First

Install n-skills if you run Claude Code or Codex and want a short, curated list of skills reachable through one marketplace command, or if you maintain an agent that reads AGENTS.md and want a portable source of skills without writing your own installer. Skip it if you need a large catalogue, if you require per-release review of every skill you install, or if your agent is absent from the compatibility table and you are not willing to test the openskills path yourself. Three things to verify before you commit: the LICENSE file and the .source.json of each skill you install, to establish what licence actually governs that skill; the upstream repository named in .source.json, to confirm it is still maintained, since the daily sync will faithfully copy an abandoned project; and the openskills repository, since the universal path for Cursor, Windsurf, Cline and Amp Code runs through it. If any of those three checks fails, install the specific skill from its own source instead of through the marketplace.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt n-skills if you already run Claude Code or Codex and want a small, curated set of skills installed through a single marketplace command, or if you maintain an agent that reads AGENTS.md and want a portable skill source. Do not adopt it if you need a large catalogue or guaranteed per-skill review, because the repository is a curation layer over upstream projects rather than the author of most skills. Before installing, read the LICENSE file, check each skill's .source.json to see whether it is native or synced, and confirm the upstream repository is still active, since a synced skill's quality and maintenance are the upstream maintainer's, not n-skills'.

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: Apache-2.0
3. numman-ali/n-skills on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases