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

skillmarketplace