Installing skills

Skills install through the shipmoor CLI — no separate download, no manual file editing. One command writes the whole bundle into your agent’s instruction file as a single managed block, and one command removes it cleanly.

The command surface

shipmoor skills list                 # the catalog + your entitlement state
shipmoor skills install claude       # write the managed block into CLAUDE.md
shipmoor skills install all          # every supported agent
shipmoor skills status               # what's installed where
shipmoor skills uninstall claude     # remove only the managed block
shipmoor skills install claude --json

Supported agents: claude, codex, cursor, aider.

What install writes

A marker-wrapped, idempotent managed block into the agent’s own instruction file — never anywhere else:

Three guarantees worth knowing before you run it on a repo with existing agent config:

• Idempotent. Re-running install is byte-identical — safe to put in a setup script.
• Content-preserving. Everything outside the managed block, including your own instructions, is untouched.
• Reversible. uninstall removes only the managed block and restores your file.

If the Agent Harness (preview) is also installed, the two coexist: each owns its own marker-wrapped block and only ever touches its own.

Verifying an install

--json is the canonical signal (shipmoor.skills.install.v1) — script against it rather than grepping the rendered file:

shipmoor skills install claude --json

{
  "schema_version": "shipmoor.skills.install.v1",
  "entitlement_state": "ic_active",
  "results": [
    {
      "agent": "claude",
      "action": "installed",
      "target": "CLAUDE.md",
      "skills": [
        { "name": "shipmoor-review", "tier": "ic", "enabled": true },
        { "name": "shipmoor-agent-guard", "tier": "ic", "enabled": true },
        { "name": "shipmoor-intent-contract", "tier": "ic", "enabled": true },
        { "name": "shipmoor-fix", "tier": "ic", "enabled": true },
        { "name": "shipmoor-pr-preflight", "tier": "ic", "enabled": true }
      ],
      "warnings": []
    }
  ]
}

How entitlements gate skills

Agent Skills is a paid first-party product on the IC plan, gated at the command level by the agent_skills entitlement:

• Entitled: the full five-skill bundle installs, enabled: true per skill.
• Not entitled: list and status still show the catalog (locked); install shows an upgrade prompt plus a DIY pointer — how to wire the free Community CLI into your agent yourself.

Engine-depth gates still apply inside individual skills: shipmoor-intent-contract needs intent_scan, and shipmoor-fix needs repair_guidance. A skill whose deeper entitlement is missing degrades to its Community-safe behavior instead of failing. Check your live state any time with shipmoor capabilities --json — see Capabilities & entitlements.

Next

• The five skills — what each behavior actually does.
• Using skills with your agent — per-agent specifics and a worked loop.
• Agent Harness (preview) — the runtime that complements these behaviors.