Skill Finder

Discover existing official skills before creating a new one.

Quick start

1. Capture intent — domain (PDF, auth, PostgreSQL) + task (extract, validate, migrate)
2. Search references/official-skills.md using grep-style keyword lookup
3. Rank matches by publisher reputation and relevance
4. Present 3-5 candidates with owner/name + one-line description + link
5. Fallback to skills.sh / npx skills find / skill-creator if nothing fits

Workflow

Step 1: Understand intent

Extract two dimensions from the user's request:

• Domain — the subject area (e.g., PDF, auth, postgres, stripe, react)
• Task — the action verb (e.g., extract, validate, migrate, test, deploy)

If the user is vague ("help me with auth stuff"), ask one clarifying question before searching. A narrower query returns better matches.

Step 2: Search the local list

Grep references/official-skills.md with the domain keyword first, then refine with task keywords if too many hits.

grep -i "pdf" .agents/skills/skill-finder/references/official-skills.md
grep -i "auth\|oauth\|jwt" .agents/skills/skill-finder/references/official-skills.md

Expand queries for common synonyms:

• database → also match postgres, sql, mongo, mysql
• auth → also match oauth, jwt, session, login
• UI → also match frontend, react, design, component

Step 3: Rank matches

When multiple candidates surface, prefer publishers in this order:

1. Official publishers — anthropics/, vercel-labs/, stripe/, supabase/,

microsoft/, google-gemini/, cloudflare/, openai/

1. Well-known teams — huggingface/, sentry/, mongodb/, auth0/,

figma/, notion/, datadog/

1. Community — any remaining matches

Within a single publisher, prefer the skill whose name most directly matches the user's task verb.

Step 4: Present candidates

Format each recommendation as:

owner/skill-name — one-line description
https://officialskills.sh/owner/skills/skill-name

Present 3-5 candidates. Lead with the single best match; list alternatives under a "See also" line if useful.

Step 5: Fallback when nothing matches

If no skill fits the query:

1. Point to skills.sh — browse the leaderboard by

install count

1. Suggest npx skills find <query> — Vercel Labs' CLI search
2. As a last resort, invoke skill-creator to build one from scratch

Never invent a skill name. If it's not in references/official-skills.md and not on skills.sh, the user needs to create one.

Gotchas

• references/official-skills.md is a static snapshot — regenerate it when

the upstream source changes significantly. The header records the last update date.

• Trust the publisher prefix. anthropics/ ≠ anthropic-community/ — the

former is the official Anthropic repo, the latter is community-maintained.

• The list contains both skills and reference implementations. If a

match looks like a template or tutorial rather than a working skill, flag that to the user.

• Do not recommend a skill based solely on name match. Verify the

description aligns with the user's actual task.

Refresh

references/official-skills.md is a static snapshot. To refresh, replace its content with an updated curated list from a source of your choice, then update the header (date, skill count).