PaperClipAI/docs/guides/agent-developer/skills-store.md

title, summary

title	summary
The Skills Store	Browse, install, import, fork, and share the reusable skills your agents use

The Skills Store is Paperclip's library of reusable skills. A skill is a markdown playbook that teaches an agent how to do a specific kind of work — triage an issue, write a wireframe, run QA acceptance, draft a release announcement. The Store is where people (and agents) discover those skills, install them into a company, and manage them over time.

If you want to author a skill, read Writing a Skill. This page is about the store around skills: where they come from, how they get into your company, and how you keep them current.

Two layers: the catalog and your company library

There are two distinct things people loosely call "the skills store":

Layer	What it is	Lives in
The catalog	A curated, read-only set of skills that ships with Paperclip	The @paperclipai/skills-catalog package
Your company library	The skills actually installed in your company, which agents can run	The company_skills database table

The catalog is the shelf you browse. Your company library is the cart you've checked out. Installing a catalog skill copies it into your company library, where you can edit, version, fork, and share it independently of the original.

The bundled catalog

The catalog is built from markdown under packages/skills-catalog/catalog/ and compiled into a manifest (generated/catalog.json) at build time. Each catalog skill is one directory containing a SKILL.md plus any supporting references/, scripts/, or assets/ files.

The catalog splits skills into two kinds:

• bundled — first-party Paperclip skills (e.g. issue-triage, task-planning, qa-acceptance, wireframe, github-pr-workflow, doc-maintenance). These carry the reserved paperclipai/paperclip/... key namespace.
• optional — additional curated skills you opt into (e.g. agent-browser, design-critique, release-announcement, last30days, ramp).

Every catalog skill carries metadata used for discovery and safety:

• category — grouping such as software-development, quality, product, research, content, browser, paperclip-operations, docs.
• recommendedForRoles — agent roles the skill suits (engineer, qa, designer, product, researcher, …), used to suggest skills when staffing a company.
• trustLevel — see Trust levels.
• compatibility — compatible, unknown, or invalid, derived during the build validation pass.
• contentHash — a hash of the skill's files, used later to detect updates and drift.

Trust levels: what a skill is allowed to carry

Because a skill can bundle more than prose, every skill is classified by how much trust its contents require. The level is derived from the files, not self-declared:

Trust level	Contains	Notes
markdown_only	Only .md files	Safest — pure instructions
assets	Markdown plus images/PDFs/other static files	No executable code
scripts_executables	Any script (.sh, .js, .py, .ts, …)	Highest scrutiny

Trust level gates what can be imported. A skill that carries executable scripts cannot be imported from an external source (GitHub, skills.sh, or a raw URL) — only first-party bundled catalog skills are allowed to ship scripts. This keeps untrusted remote code out of your agents' hands.

Where skills come from (source types)

A skill in your company library records where it originated. The Store shows this as a source badge:

Source type	Badge	Meaning
catalog	Paperclip / catalog	Installed from the bundled catalog
github	GitHub	Imported from a GitHub repo (pinned to a commit)
skills_sh	skills.sh	Imported via the skills.sh registry (resolves to GitHub)
url	URL	Imported from a raw markdown URL
local_path	Local	Created in-app or scanned from a project workspace on disk

External imports (github, skills_sh, url) are held to two rules: they must be markdown_only or assets (no scripts), and Git-backed sources must resolve to a pinned 40-character commit SHA before import, so a moving branch can never silently change what your agents run.

Thin wrappers for external live playbooks

Some optional catalog skills intentionally do not vendor a third-party playbook. The ramp skill is the model: Paperclip ships the stable governance wrapper, source allowlist, and approval gates, then tells the agent to fetch Ramp's current published instructions from agents.ramp.com when the task starts.

Use this pattern only when the external provider's setup flow changes often enough that a vendored snapshot would go stale, and when Paperclip can keep the safety boundary in the wrapper. For financial, legal, or account-control domains, the wrapper must require Paperclip approvals before spend, incorporation, account authorization, card issuance, data sharing, or other irreversible actions. The tradeoff should be documented in the skill or PR so reviewers can evaluate freshness against external-instruction risk. If the provider mixes official and community playbooks on the same host, the wrapper must fail closed on unclear provenance and require separate approval before using any third-party tool, connector, browser automation service, or credential flow introduced by a fetched playbook.

Getting skills into your company

The Store offers several paths, all of which land a skill in your company library.

Install from the catalog

Browse the catalog's discovery grid, pick a skill, and install it. Installing copies the catalog skill's files into your company library and stamps provenance metadata (the catalog key, content hash, and package version) so the Store can later tell you when the upstream catalog skill has changed.

• API: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/install-catalog
• Re-installing an already-installed catalog skill updates it in place rather than creating a duplicate.

Import from an external source

Paste a source and Paperclip fetches and imports it. Accepted forms include:

• A GitHub repo or subfolder URL (https://github.com/owner/repo/tree/<ref>/skills/foo)
• A short owner/repo or owner/repo/skill reference
• A skills.sh URL or an npx skills add … command (both resolve to the GitHub source)
• A raw markdown URL pointing directly at a SKILL.md

A repo can contain many skills; the importer discovers every SKILL.md under the path (optionally filtered to a single --skill slug).

• API: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/import

Create a local skill

Author a skill directly in the company library without any external source. This is the "new skill" path — you provide the name, description, and markdown body and it's stored as a local_path / managed-local skill.

• API: POST /companies/:companyId/skills

Scan a project workspace

Agents and projects often already keep skills on disk under conventional folders (skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/, and many other tool-specific roots). The project scan walks a workspace, finds those SKILL.md directories, and offers to import them into the company library, reporting any conflicts or skips.

• API: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/scan-projects

Living with installed skills

Once a skill is in your library, the Store treats it like a small product with a lifecycle.

Versions

Each skill keeps a revision history. Saving a new version snapshots the full file inventory (with content) and bumps the revision number, so you can review history and roll back.

• List: GET /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/versions
• Create: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/versions

Updates, drift, and reset

For skills installed from the catalog or an external source, the Store tracks the origin. The update status endpoint compares your installed copy against the latest upstream and reports whether an update is available, whether you have locally modified the skill (drift), and any hold reason that should block an automatic update.

• Check: GET /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/update-status
• Install the upstream update: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/install-update (with force to override local drift)
• Discard local changes and return to the pristine origin: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/reset

Audit

A skill can be audited to compare its installed content hash against its recorded origin hash and flag tampering or unexpected drift. The audit returns a verdict and a set of codes that the Store surfaces as a health signal.

• API: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/audit

Fork

Forking copies an existing skill into a new, independent library entry (optionally with a new name, slug, and sharing scope). The fork records what it was forked from, and the original's forkCount increments. Use this to customize a catalog or community skill without losing the ability to see the upstream it came from.

• API: POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/fork

Stars and comments

Skills are social objects inside the Store. Members can star a skill (a per-actor toggle that drives the starCount) and leave threaded comments for discussion and review.

• Star / unstar: POST / DELETE /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/star
• Comments: GET / POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/comments, plus PATCH and DELETE for editing and removing.

Sharing scope

Every company skill has a sharing scope that controls who can see it:

Scope	Visibility
private	Only the author/owner
company	Everyone in the company
public_link	Anyone with the generated public share token

Scope is set when creating, updating, or forking a skill, and the Store's discovery view can filter by it.

How agents actually use installed skills

Installing a skill is not the same as an agent running it. At runtime, a company's installed skills are materialized into the agent's workspace as SKILL.md directories, and the agent's harness loads the frontmatter name + description of each skill as routing logic. The agent reads those one-line descriptions to decide whether a skill is relevant to the current task, and only then loads the full body. (This is why a skill's description should read as "what this does and when to use it" — it is the index the agent searches.)

Skill sync into agent workspaces is governed by a per-instance preference, so an operator can control whether and how the company library is pushed down to running agents.

Reference: API surface

All endpoints are under the company-skills router.

Catalog (read-only)

• GET /skills/catalog — list the bundled catalog
• GET /skills/catalog/:catalogId — one catalog skill
• GET /skills/catalog/:catalogId/files — its file inventory + content

Company library

• GET /companies/:companyId/skills — list (supports q, sort, categories, scope)
• GET /companies/:companyId/skills/categories — category counts
• GET /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId — detail
• GET /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/files — file inventory + content
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills — create a local skill
• PATCH /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId — edit metadata / sharing scope
• DELETE /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId — remove from the library
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/install-catalog — install a catalog skill
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/import — import from GitHub / skills.sh / URL
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/scan-projects — scan workspaces for skills
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/fork — fork a skill
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/versions · GET …/versions · GET …/versions/:versionId
• GET /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/update-status
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/install-update
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/reset
• POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/audit
• POST / DELETE /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/star
• GET / POST /companies/:companyId/skills/:skillId/comments · PATCH / DELETE …/comments/:commentId

All mutating endpoints require permission to manage the company's skills and are recorded in the company activity log.

Reference: the catalog package

The catalog is its own publishable package, @paperclipai/skills-catalog:

• catalog/bundled/** and catalog/optional/** — the source skill directories
• scripts/build-catalog-manifest.ts — compiles the directories into generated/catalog.json
• scripts/validate-catalog.ts — validates frontmatter, keys, and trust classification
• src/index.ts — exports catalogManifest, catalogSkills, getCatalogSkill(id), and resolveCatalogSkillRef(ref) for resolving a skill by id, key, or slug

To add a skill to the bundled catalog, create the directory with a SKILL.md, then run the package's build:manifest (and validate) scripts to regenerate and check the manifest.

See also

• Writing a Skill — the SKILL.md format and authoring best practices
• How Agents Work — how skills fit into a heartbeat

         (o)___(o)
        /         \
       |  o     o  |
       |     <     |
        \  \___/  /
         \_______/
        /         \
   ~~~ ribbit ~~~  skills! ~~~