Skill Market

Searching & Installing Skills

**Always use the search_skills tool.** Do NOT manually curl, browse GitHub, or download SKILL.md files.

search_skills does everything automatically:

• Local — checks installed skills first

• Starchild community — searches community-skills index

• skills.sh — searches the global skills ecosystem (OpenClaw, Vercel, Anthropic, etc.)

• Auto-install — installs the best match via npx skills add (default: auto_install=true)

Usage

search_skills(query="deploy")           # search + auto-install best match

search_skills(query="trading")          # search + auto-install

search_skills(query="k8s", auto_install=false)  # search only, don't install

search_skills()                         # list all installed skills

After search_skills installs a skill, it's immediately available. Call skill_refresh() only if you manually edited skill files.

What NOT to do

• Do NOT curl GitHub repos to browse/download skills

• Do NOT mkdir -p skills/<name> and manually write SKILL.md

• Do NOT use web_fetch to download skill files

• Do NOT use the old gateway search/install endpoints (they no longer exist)

Publishing (Starchild Only)

Publishing still uses the gateway. Only Starchild-authored skills can be published.

SKILL.md Requirements

---

name: my-skill

version: 1.0.0

description: What this skill does

author: your-name

tags: [tag1, tag2]

---

Field

Required

Rules

name

Yes

Lowercase, alphanumeric + hyphens, 2-64 chars

version

Yes

Semver (e.g. 1.0.0) — immutable once published

description

Recommended

Short summary for search

author

Recommended

Author name

tags

Recommended

Array of tags for discoverability

Publish Workflow

Step 1: Validate the skill directory

SKILL_DIR="./skills/my-skill"

head -20 "$SKILL_DIR/SKILL.md"

Step 2: Get OIDC token

TOKEN=$(curl -s --unix-socket /.fly/api \

  -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \

  "http://localhost/v1/tokens/oidc" \

  -d '{"aud": "skills-market-gateway"}')

Step 3: Build and send publish request

SKILL_DIR="./skills/my-skill"

GATEWAY="https://skills-market-gateway.fly.dev"

PAYLOAD=$(python3 -c "

import os, json

files = {}

for root, dirs, fnames in os.walk('$SKILL_DIR'):

    for f in fnames:

        full = os.path.join(root, f)

        rel = os.path.relpath(full, '$SKILL_DIR')

        with open(full) as fh:

            files[rel] = fh.read()

print(json.dumps({'files': files}))

")

curl -s -X POST "$GATEWAY/skills/publish" \

  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \

  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \

  -d "$PAYLOAD" | python3 -m json.tool

Response (201)

{

  "namespace": "@554",

  "name": "my-skill",

  "version": "1.0.0",

  "tag": "@554/my-skill@1.0.0",

  "download_url": "https://github.com/.../bundle.zip",

  "release_url": "https://github.com/.../releases/tag/..."

}

Version Rules

• Each version is immutable — once published, it cannot be overwritten.

• To update, bump the version and publish again.

Decision Tree

User wants to find/install a skill

  → Use search_skills(query) tool — it searches all sources and auto-installs

  → NEVER curl GitHub or manually download files

User wants to list installed skills

  → Use search_skills() with no query

User wants to publish a skill

  → Validate SKILL.md frontmatter

  → Get OIDC token (audience: skills-market-gateway)

  → POST to /skills/publish

User wants to create a new skill

  → Read the skill-creator skill first