Distribute a Skill Across All Agents

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- Use when a skill should be made available across multiple local agent skill folders. - Use when the user asks to sync or distribute skill updates to other agents.

Category: AI & Intelligent Agents
Repo: antigravity-awesome-skills
Path: skills/distribute-skill-to-all-agents/SKILL.md
Updated: 7/12/2026, 11:41:17 PM
Open on GitHubHow to Install

AI Summary

- Use when a skill should be made available across multiple local agent skill folders. - Use when the user asks to sync or distribute skill updates to other agents. It is useful for LLM applications, agent orchestration, RAG pipelines, AI evaluation, and multi-agent workflows. Source: antigravity-awesome-skills (skills/distribute-skill-to-all-agents/SKILL.md).

Distribute a Skill Across All Agents

When to Use

  • Use when a skill should be made available across multiple local agent skill folders.
  • Use when the user asks to sync or distribute skill updates to other agents.

The user has 4 agent skill locations on his MacBook. A skill must exist in each (or via symlink) to be discoverable by every agent.

The 4 Canonical Locations

AgentSkills FolderNotes
Codex / OpenAI Agents~/.agents/skills/Canonical — author skills here first
Claude Code~/.claude/skills/Symlink → ~/.agents/skills/ — writing to .agents/skills automatically covers Claude
Pi Agent~/.pi/agent/skills/Symlink → ~/.agents/skills/ — auto-covered. (Path is /agent/ nested — NOT ~/.pi/skills/)
Hermes Agent~/.hermes/skills/Independent copy — the only one needing a manual copy

Workflow

  1. Author the skill in ~/.agents/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md (canonical). Follow effective-agent-skills SKILL.md guidance.
  2. Verify the .claude symlink is intact (one-time check): 
    ls -la ~/.claude/skills
# Expect: ~/.claude/skills -> ~/.agents/skills
    If it's a real directory instead of a symlink, the user has diverged copies — ask before touching.
  3. Copy to .hermes only (.claude and .pi are symlinks — already covered): 
    SKILL=<skill-name>
cp -r ~/.agents/skills/$SKILL ~/.hermes/skills/
  4. Verify all 4 locations show identical byte counts: 
    for p in ~/.agents/skills/$SKILL ~/.claude/skills/$SKILL ~/.pi/agent/skills/$SKILL ~/.hermes/skills/$SKILL; do
  echo "$p: $(wc -c < $p/SKILL.md) bytes"
done
    All four numbers must match. If .claude or .pi shows a different byte count, that symlink is broken — investigate before proceeding.

Updating an Existing Distributed Skill

Same flow — re-copy from ~/.agents/skills/ to .hermes/skills/. The .claude and .pi symlinks update automatically. cp -r overwrites by default; use rsync -a --delete if the skill folder has nested files that may have been removed:

rsync -a --delete ~/.agents/skills/$SKILL/ ~/.hermes/skills/$SKILL/

Pitfalls

  • ~/.pi/skills/ is the wrong location. Pi Agent loads from ~/.pi/agent/skills/ only. A skill placed in ~/.pi/skills/ is invisible. If you find skills already there, they're orphans — confirm with the user before deleting.
  • ~/.claude/skills is a symlink, not a folder. cp -r ~/.agents/skills/foo ~/.claude/skills/ will error with "are identical". Skip the explicit Claude copy.
  • Project-local skills exist too — ./.pi/agent/skills/ (or .pi/skills/) inside a repo overrides the global one on collision (later-discovered wins). This skill only handles GLOBAL distribution.
  • .pi/agent/skills is a symlink → .agents/skills. Don't cp into it (errors "are identical"); it auto-syncs. Only .hermes/skills is an independent copy — don't unilaterally consolidate Hermes into a symlink unless the user asks.
  • Hermes snapshots skills at session start. A newly-distributed skill won't appear inside a running Hermes session until restart (it works fine for future sessions and for the other 3 agents immediately).
  • Filename casing matters on case-sensitive volumes. SKILL.md must be uppercase.

When NOT to Use This Skill

  • Skill is project-specific → put it in ./.claude/skills/, ./.pi/agent/skills/, etc. inside the repo, not globally.
  • Editing one agent's skill only (e.g. a Hermes-only workflow) → patch that file directly, don't propagate.
  • Removing a skill globally is destructive. First show the exact skill directories that would be removed, confirm with the user, then use the user's preferred safe deletion method for ~/.agents/skills/ and ~/.hermes/skills/.

Limitations

  • Adapted from davidondrej/skills; verify local paths, tools, credentials, and agent features before acting.
  • For commands, remote access, scheduling, browser automation, or file-changing workflows, get explicit user approval and confirm the target environment first.

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