How to add skills in Cursor

Cursor loads Agent Skills from skill directories and can also run them when you type / in Agent chat. This walkthrough only uses paths on Cursor’s Skills page.

Start from Cursor’s Skills doc.

Read cursor.com/docs/context/skills. Skills are folders with a SKILL.md. Cursor discovers them at startup and the agent decides relevance from context. You can also type / in Agent chat and search for the skill name.

Where Cursor loads skills.

On that page, skills load from:

  • .agents/skills/ — project
  • .cursor/skills/ — project
  • ~/.agents/skills/ — user (this machine)
  • ~/.cursor/skills/ — user (this machine)

For compatibility, Cursor also loads .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/, ~/.claude/skills/, and ~/.codex/skills/. User-level folders stay on the machine where the agent runs — they are not copied to Cloud Agents. Put project skills in the repo for remote sessions.

The frontmatter name must match the parent folder name. View discovered skills under Customize → Skills.

Add a Tiny Design Shop skill.

Open the companion from Browse skills, download or copy, and place the folder in one of the locations above. Or run the install-once command in How to install portable skills, then confirm the folder landed where Cursor looks. Cursor’s page also describes importing from GitHub via Customize → Rules → Add Rule → Remote Rule (Github).

Confirm it loaded.

Open Customize → Skills, or type / in Agent chat and find the skill name.

DeepSeek is a model you can pick in Cursor. It does not have its own ~/.deepseek/skills folder. Skills still live in the Cursor directories on this page.