Cursor Skills

A curated collection of skills for Cursor AI. Skills give your AI agent specialized capabilities - from building UIs to managing databases to creating documents.

Installation

Option 1: Cursor Settings (Recommended - Cursor 2.4+)

The simplest way to use skills. No server setup required.

1. Open Cursor Settings (Cmd+Shift+J)
2. Go to the Rules tab
3. Click Add Rule → Remote Rule (GitHub)
4. Enter: https://github.com/aussiegingersnap/cursor-skills
5. Select the skills you want to import

Skills are copied to your .cursor/skills/ directory and automatically discovered.

Option 2: Manual Copy

Clone and copy specific skills to your project:

git clone https://github.com/aussiegingersnap/cursor-skills /tmp/cursor-skills
cp -r /tmp/cursor-skills/skills/ui-design-system .cursor/skills/

Option 3: MCP Server (Advanced)

For global skill access across all projects or legacy Cursor versions.

1. Copy .cursor/mcp_example.json to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (project)
2. Update the path to your cloned mcp/skills_mcp.py
3. Reload Cursor
4. Copy main_rule.mdc contents to Cursor Settings → Rules (for global setup)

See MCP Setup below for details.

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Comparison: Native vs MCP

Feature	Native (Cursor 2.4+)	MCP Server
Setup	None - auto-discovered	Python + uv required
Scope	Project-specific	Global or project
Discovery	Automatic	Via list_skills tool
Import	Cursor Settings UI	Via import_skill tool
Best for	Most users	Advanced setups, global skills

Recommendation: Use native skills for most projects. Use MCP only if you need global skills across all projects.

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Available Skills

Core Skills (Recommended for all projects)

Skill	Description
feature-build	Complete feature development lifecycle with phases
skill-creator	Create new skills with guided workflow
documentation	Project documentation standards
versioning	Semantic versioning with CHANGELOG
judge	Quality review for complex changes

UI & Frontend (ui-, state-)

Skill	Description
ui-design-system	Linear/Notion-inspired UI patterns with style guide
ui-principles	Minimal, crafted UI principles
nextjs-16	Next.js 16 App Router patterns
state-effector	Effector reactive state management
state-tanstack	Tanstack Query + Zustand patterns

Backend & Data (db-, auth-, api-)

Skill	Description
db-postgres	PostgreSQL with Drizzle ORM
db-sqlite	SQLite with Prisma + Litestream backup
api-rest	REST API conventions with Zod validation
auth-better-auth	Better Auth integration
auth-lucia	Lucia auth patterns

MCP & AI Integration

Skill	Description
mcp-apps	Build MCP Apps with interactive UI for Claude/ChatGPT/VSCode

Infrastructure (infra-, secrets-)

Skill	Description
infra-docker	Local Docker development
infra-railway	Railway deployment
infra-env	Environment configuration patterns
secrets-1password	1Password CLI for secrets management

Dev Environment

Skill	Description
tools-mise	Mise dev tool manager - tasks, tools, environments, hooks

Tools & Integrations (tools-)

Skill	Description
tools-linear	Linear issue tracking
tools-youtube	YouTube downloads and transcripts
tools-repo-review	GitHub repository analysis
tools-email	Email with Resend and React Email
tools-artifacts	Build HTML artifacts with React and shadcn/ui
tools-posthog	Feature flags with PostHog

Document Skills

Skill	Description
document-skills/docx	Microsoft Word documents
document-skills/pdf	PDF generation and manipulation
document-skills/pptx	PowerPoint presentations
document-skills/xlsx	Excel spreadsheets

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What are Skills?

Skills are a simple yet powerful pattern for giving AI coding agents specialized capabilities. A skill is a Markdown file telling the model how to do something, optionally accompanied by scripts and reference documents.

Anatomy of a Skill

skills/my-skill/
├── SKILL.md           # Core instructions (required)
├── scripts/           # Helper scripts (optional)
│   └── helper.py
├── references/        # Supporting docs (optional)
│   └── api-docs.md
└── LICENSE.txt        # License (optional)

• SKILL.md (required): Instructions for the agent. YAML frontmatter provides metadata.
• scripts/ (optional): Pre-written scripts the agent can execute
• references/ (optional): Supporting documentation, examples, templates

Why Skills Work

Skills leverage that modern AI agents can read files and execute commands. Any task you can accomplish by typing commands can be encoded as a skill.

The design is token-efficient: the agent only loads full skill content when needed. Skill discovery uses just the frontmatter metadata (a few dozen tokens).

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Creating Your Own Skills

Automatically

Ask Cursor to create a skill:

Create a skill for managing AWS S3 buckets

The skill-creator skill guides the process.

Manually

1. Create skills/my-skill/SKILL.md:

---
name: my-skill
description: Brief description for discovery. Explain when this skill should be used.
---

# My Skill

Detailed instructions for the agent...

2. Add optional scripts in skills/my-skill/scripts/
3. Add optional reference docs in skills/my-skill/references/

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MCP Server Setup

For global skill access or legacy Cursor versions.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• uv package manager

Installation

1. Clone this repo
2. Copy .cursor/mcp_example.json to .cursor/mcp.json
3. Update the path:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cursor-skills": {
      "command": "uv",
      "type": "stdio",
      "args": ["run", "/path/to/cursor-skills/mcp/skills_mcp.py"]
    }
  }
}

4. Reload Cursor (Cmd+Shift+P → "Developer: Reload Window")
5. Verify in Settings → Tools and MCP: "cursor-skills" shows 4 tools

Global Setup

To use skills across all projects:

1. Place mcp.json in ~/.cursor/ (global config)
2. Copy contents of .cursor/rules/main_rule.mdc to Cursor Settings → Rules

MCP Tools

Tool	Description
list_skills	List installed skills with descriptions
invoke_skill	Load a skill's full instructions
find_skill	Browse community skills directory
import_skill	Import from GitHub URL

Import from GitHub (MCP)

Please import https://github.com/anthropics/skills

The import tool automatically:

• Detects single skills vs. directories
• Downloads all files including scripts
• Validates SKILL.md exists
• Skips already-installed skills

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External Skill Sources

Import skills from other repositories:

• Anthropic's Skills Repository - Official collection
• Claude Cookbooks - Additional examples

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Project Structure

cursor-skills/
├── .cursor/
│   ├── mcp_example.json       # MCP config template
│   └── rules/
│       └── main_rule.mdc      # Orchestrator rules (for MCP)
├── mcp/
│   └── skills_mcp.py          # MCP server
├── skills/                    # Skills collection
│   ├── ui-design-system/      # ui- prefix for frontend
│   ├── db-postgres/           # db- prefix for database
│   ├── infra-railway/         # infra- prefix for infrastructure
│   ├── tools-linear/          # tools- prefix for integrations
│   ├── feature-build/         # No prefix for core workflow
│   └── ...
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

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Troubleshooting

Native Skills Not Discovered

• Ensure skill has SKILL.md file with valid frontmatter
• Check .cursor/skills/ directory exists
• Restart Cursor after adding skills

MCP Server Not Starting

• Check Cursor logs: View → Output → MCP
• Verify Python 3.10+ installed
• Verify uv installed: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv
• Check paths in .cursor/mcp.json

Skills Not Found (MCP)

• Ensure skill directory has SKILL.md file
• Directory name must not start with . or _
• Verify skills/ directory exists at repo root

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License

This repository is licensed under the MIT License.

Third-party skills imported from external sources retain their original licenses. See individual skill directories for LICENSE files.