Show Notes
Skills are bundled markdown files that give your coding agents context on how to do specific tasks. The problem: every agent has its own format, and managing them across Claude, Codex, Cursor, and others is becoming a mess. Vercel Labs just released a tool to fix that.
The Skills Problem
If you look in any agent's codex or skills directory, you'll see things getting messy. People are figuring out the best structure — usually a skill name folder containing a .skill.md file plus supporting docs.
Take Vercel's React best practices skill as an example. It has front matter with metadata, impact levels to indicate when rules should trigger, and multiple markdown files for different rule categories. That structure works, but now you need to replicate it across every coding agent you use.
The Skills CLI
Guillermo (CEO of Vercel) talked about a "skills" approach, and the Better Auth creator adopted it. Now there's an actual CLI to manage this:
npx @vercel-labs/agent-skills
Run that command and you get a selection UI. Pick the skills you want, choose which coding agents to install them to, and decide whether it's project-level or global.
What Happens When You Install
I selected Better Auth skills and installed globally. It pushed to 9 agents at once — Claude, Codex, and others I didn't even realize I was using.
After installation, check your agent's skills directory. In Claude, you'll see the new skill files with proper structure:
- Skill description and metadata
- Implementation guides
- Reference docs
Why This Matters
Instead of manually copying markdown files between agents and keeping them in sync, you now have a package manager approach. Install once, update centrally.
This is how the ecosystem should work — curated skills that experts maintain, distributed to whatever agent you prefer.
Links
- Vercel Labs Agent Skills — The CLI and skill repository
- Better Auth — TypeScript authentication framework with skills support
- Vibe with AI Discord — Community for AI builders