update-installed-skills

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

1. List currently installed skills.

npx ai-agent-skills list --installed --format json --fields name

2. Check for available updates.

npx ai-agent-skills check

3. Dry-run the update.

npx ai-agent-skills sync <skill-name> --dry-run

4. Apply the update after reviewing.

npx ai-agent-skills sync <skill-name>

5. 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.