Update External Skills

Update all third-party skills installed via the skills CLI to their latest versions.

External skills are those installed from remote repositories with npx skills add. Locally authored skills (created manually in ~/.claude/skills/ or .claude/skills/) are not affected.

Usage

Give the user the command:

! npx skills update

The command checks all installed skills against their source repositories and updates any that have newer versions available.

If the update fails

• Network error: Check internet connection. The CLI needs to reach GitHub/GitLab.
• Permission error: Check write access to ~/.claude/skills/ (or the agent's skill directory).
• Single skill fails: Reinstall just that skill:

  npx skills add <owner/repo> --skill <name>
  

Check what is installed

npx skills list

Shows all installed skills, their source repositories, and current versions.

Important

• This only updates skills installed via npx skills add from remote repos.
• Skills you created locally or symlinked manually are not tracked and won't be affected.
• After updating, restart Claude Code for the new skill versions to take effect.