skill-buddy

SkillBuddy brings Skills and MCP configurations scattered across different AI coding tools into one interface. It can inspect local installations, distribute content across platforms, resolve drift, discover resources from public marketplaces, and manage reviewed team assets through Git repositories.

Screenshots

The screenshots below show complete application windows and the main SkillBuddy workflows. The Skills page supports both list and tiled grid views.

Highlights

• Unified inventory: automatically discover and aggregate Skills and MCP Servers across agents.
• Cross-platform installation: install one Skill into multiple user-level or project-level targets.
• Drift detection and synchronization: compare conflicting copies and synchronize from a selected baseline.
• Enable, disable, and uninstall: manage writable Skills, with trash and undo support for removal.
• Skill discovery: search skills.sh, SkillHub, and GitHub, then inspect content and resources before installation.
• MCP discovery and change plans: find MCP Servers, validate target capabilities, and preview exact writes.
• Presets and bundles: save reusable Skill sets for batch installation, toggling, import, and export.
• Private Git backup: back up user-level Skills and Presets, then preview restore operations on another device.
• Git team libraries: manage reviewed Skills, MCP definitions, role bundles, and policies through protected branches and PRs/MRs.
• Project compliance: declare project requirements in .skillbuddy/team.yaml and detect missing, outdated, blocked, or unresolved resources.
• Custom platforms: add another agent by configuring its detection, user, and project paths.
• Bilingual UI: Simplified Chinese and English are built in.

Supported Agents

SkillBuddy includes built-in Skill directory conventions for:

MCP formats, scopes, and capabilities vary by platform. SkillBuddy displays the detected configuration surfaces and validates every planned change before applying it. Some conventions still need broader real-device feedback; see Platform conventions.

System Support

The SkillBuddy desktop application currently provides the following build targets:

Release assets use the SkillBuddy-v<version>-<system>-<architecture>.<extension> naming convention.

• macOS arm64/x64: SkillBuddy-v<version>-macos-<architecture>.dmg and .zip
• Windows x64/arm64: SkillBuddy-v<version>-windows-<architecture>.exe and .zip
• Linux x64/arm64: SkillBuddy-v<version>-linux-<architecture>.AppImage, .deb, and .rpm (x86_64 for x64 builds)

Download

Download the installer for your system from:

• Open GitHub Releases
• Read the changelog

macOS First Launch

The macOS installer uses a complete ad-hoc signature and is not notarized with an Apple Developer ID. Gatekeeper may block it because it is not from an identified developer. After moving the app to Applications, open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Security and click Open Anyway. Confirm the prompt to launch SkillBuddy. You can also control-click the app and choose Open. If the security approval button does not appear, use the following fallback for an installer downloaded from the official GitHub Release:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/SkillBuddy.app
open /Applications/SkillBuddy.app

The xattr command only removes the download quarantine attribute and should be used as a last resort. If macOS reports that the app is damaged, do not bypass the warning: download a current installer because that indicates an invalid or incomplete app signature.

The self-hosted Registry service and CLI are separate optional components and are not included in the desktop installer.

SkillBuddy reads the local directories already used by your agents. Installation, synchronization, toggling, and removal only affect targets explicitly selected in the interface.

Team Workflow

A team can use Git as the source of truth for content, versions, permissions, and audit history:

• Maintainers edit Skills, MCP definitions, bundles, and policies on isolated skillbuddy/<id> branches.
• File lists, validation results, and diffs can be reviewed before publishing.
• GitHub contributions use gh to create Pull Requests; GitLab contributions use glab to create Merge Requests.
• Regular members browse and install only content that has already been merged.
• Private repository authentication stays with system Git, SSH Agent, or the credential manager. SkillBuddy does not store repository passwords.

See Git team libraries for repository formats and the complete workflow.

Security and Privacy

• SkillBuddy scans and manages local files by default and does not require a SkillBuddy account.
• An optional GitHub token can raise marketplace API limits and is stored through the system secure storage.
• MCP definitions must not contain plaintext tokens, passwords, or API keys. Use environment-variable or secret references.
• Git backup excludes MCP configuration, tokens, absolute machine paths, project-level Skills, and enablement state.
• Read-only system, administrator, and plugin Skills cannot be edited or removed.
• Main-process path validation prevents writes outside managed roots and rejects symlink escapes.

Repository Layout

skill-buddy/
├── apps/
│   ├── desktop/       # Electron + Vue 3 desktop app
│   └── registry/      # Optional self-hosted Fastify + SQLite registry
├── packages/
│   ├── core/          # Canonical models, scanning, aggregation, adapters, and validation
│   └── cli/           # skm command-line interface
└── docs/              # Design, platform, registry, and team-library documentation

The desktop team workflow uses Git team libraries and does not depend on the Registry. The Registry and CLI remain available in the monorepo as optional self-hosting and automation components.

Development

Requirements:

• Node.js 22 or later
• pnpm 10 or later
• Git

pnpm install
pnpm dev

Common commands:

pnpm build       # Build every workspace package
pnpm test        # Run unit tests
pnpm test:e2e    # Build and run Electron end-to-end tests
pnpm typecheck   # Type-che