| name | update-installed-skills |
| description | Use when syncing or updating previously installed skills to their latest version. Always dry-run updates before applying, and check for breaking changes. |
| category | workflow |
| version | 4.1.0 |
Update Installed Skills
Goal
Keep installed skills current without breaking the agent's workflow or silently overwriting local customizations.
Guardrails
- Always use
--dry-run before running a real update.
- Check what is currently installed before updating:
npx ai-agent-skills list --installed.
- Never update all skills at once in production without reviewing the dry-run output.
- Use
--format json to capture structured update results for logging.
Workflow
- List currently installed skills.
npx ai-agent-skills list --installed --format json --fields name
- Check for available updates.
npx ai-agent-skills check
- Dry-run the update.
npx ai-agent-skills sync <skill-name> --dry-run
- Apply the update after reviewing.
npx ai-agent-skills sync <skill-name>
- For bulk updates, review each skill's dry-run output.
npx ai-agent-skills sync --all --dry-run
Gotchas
- Skills installed from GitHub will attempt a fresh clone during sync. If the upstream repo is gone, the update will fail gracefully.
- Manually edited SKILL.md files will be overwritten by sync. Back up customizations before syncing.
- The
check command makes network requests to verify upstream sources. It may be slow or fail if sources are unreachable.
