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What are agent skills?

Skills are portable instruction sets that teach AI coding assistants how to use Trigger.dev effectively. Unlike vendor-specific config files (.cursor/rules, CLAUDE.md), skills use an open standard that works across all major AI assistants. For example, Cursor users and Claude Code users can get the same knowledge from a single install.
Skills are one of three AI tools we provide. You can also install Agent Rules for client-specific rule sets or the MCP Server for live project interaction. See the comparison table for details.
Skills are installed as directories containing a SKILL.md file. Each SKILL.md includes YAML frontmatter (name, description) and markdown instructions with patterns, examples, and best practices that AI assistants automatically discover and follow.

Installation

When you run npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills, the CLI detects your installed AI tools and copies the appropriate files to each tool’s expected location. For example, .claude/skills/, .cursor/skills/, .github/skills/, etc.
skills is an open-source CLI by Vercel. Learn more at skills.sh.
The result: your AI assistant understands Trigger.dev’s specific patterns for exports, schema validation, error handling, retries, and more.

Available skills

Install all skills at once, or pick the ones relevant to your current work:
Not sure which skill to install? Install trigger-tasks; it covers the most common patterns for writing Trigger.dev tasks.

Supported AI assistants

Skills work with any AI coding assistant that supports the Agent Skills standard, including:

Next steps

Agent Rules

Install comprehensive rule sets directly into your AI client.

MCP Server

Give your AI assistant direct access to Trigger.dev tools and APIs.

Writing tasks

Learn the task patterns that skills teach your AI assistant.

skills.sh

Browse the full Agent Skills ecosystem.