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The Better Skills CLI is a command-line tool that lets you authenticate, sync, and manage your skills from the terminal. It provides a complete workflow for creating, updating, and deploying skills to AI agents.

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Purpose and Use Cases

The CLI enables you to:
  • Authenticate with your Better Skills account using device-code flow
  • Sync skills to local AI agent directories (OpenCode, Claude Code, Cursor, etc.)
  • Search and discover skills from your vaults
  • Create and update skills from local directories
  • Clone skills for local editing and version control
  • Validate and rewrite skill links before publishing
  • Backup local skills for migration or recovery

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Built with @clack/prompts

The CLI uses @clack/prompts for interactive terminal prompts and picocolors for colorful output. Commands provide both interactive and non-interactive modes for CI/CD workflows.

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Installation

The CLI is installed as part of the Better Skills package. See the Installation guide for setup instructions. Once installed, the CLI is available as: 
better-skills <command>

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Command Categories

The CLI organizes commands into several categories:

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Authentication

Manage your Better Skills session:
  • login - Authenticate with device-code flow
  • logout - Sign out and clear local session
  • whoami - Display current session info

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Skill Management

Work with skills in your vaults:
  • list - List skills with optional search
  • search - Full-text search across skills
  • get - Fetch and display a skill
  • clone - Clone a skill to a local directory
  • create - Create a new skill from a local directory
  • update - Update an existing skill from local changes
  • delete - Delete a skill (with confirmation)
  • references - Show which skills reference a specific skill

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Sync and Deployment

Install skills to AI agents:
  • sync - Sync all skills to configured agent directories
  • config - Configure which agents to sync to
  • get-unmanaged-skills - Find local skills not managed by Better Skills

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Validation and Maintenance

Ensure skill quality before publishing:
  • validate - Validate skill folder structure and links
  • rewrite-links - Rewrite local file paths to UUID-based resource links
  • backup - Copy local skills to a backup directory

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Utilities

  • health - Check server connectivity
  • disable - Disable a vault (enterprise feature)

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Help and Version Flags

Every command supports standard help flags: 
better-skills --help
better-skills -h
better-skills help

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Environment Configuration

The CLI respects these environment variables:
  • SERVER_URL - Better Skills server URL (defaults to http://localhost:3000)
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME - Config directory for session and agent configuration
  • CODEX_HOME - Custom Codex skills directory
  • CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR - Custom Claude Code skills directory

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Session Storage

Authentication sessions are stored in: 
~/.config/better-skills/session.json
Agent configuration is stored in: 
~/.config/better-skills/config.json

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Next Steps

Authentication

Learn how to authenticate with the CLI

Skill Commands

Explore all skill management commands

Sync Workflow

Set up automatic skill syncing

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