Agent skills support in Cursor
Cursor's AI coding agent supports the open agent skills standard. Skills are discovered from .cursor/skills/ at the project level and ~/.cursor/skills/ globally. Project-level skills take precedence when names conflict. Cursor loads skill metadata at startup and activates full instructions when you reference the skill by name in chat.
Installing a skill in Cursor (project level)
Create the .cursor/skills/ directory in your project root if it doesn't exist. Download or clone the skill folder you want to use into that directory. For example: git clone https://github.com/vercel-labs/agent-skills .cursor/skills/react-best-practices. Restart Cursor or open a new chat window for the skill to be discovered.
Installing a skill globally in Cursor
For skills you want available in every project, place them in ~/.cursor/skills/. Create the directory if needed: mkdir -p ~/.cursor/skills. Then copy or clone skill folders there. Global skills are useful for personal coding preferences, language-specific conventions, or tools you use everywhere.
Activating and using skills in Cursor
In Cursor's agent chat, type @skills to see available skills or reference a skill by name: 'Use the react-best-practices skill to refactor this component.' Cursor will load the full skill instructions and apply them to the current task. You can activate multiple skills in a single session.