Agent Skills Standard

The portable SDLC standards layer for AI coding agents. Sync once, then work in your own runtime.

Current release: cli-v2.6.5 — ags sync no longer rejects repo-root LICENSE/NOTICE against release manifests; the skill validator accepts package directories under scripts/ (needed by the draw.io diagram pipeline's schema_parsers/); builds on v2.6.1's OWASP Agentic Skills Top 10 hardening (skill-content lockfile, ags verify, enforcing hooks, secret/dependency scanning). See CHANGELOG.md.

280 ready-to-use coding standards for Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Gemini, Windsurf, Trae, Kiro, Roo and more — synced, versioned, and optimized to use 85% fewer tokens than traditional prompt engineering.

npx agent-skills-standard@latest init
npx agent-skills-standard@latest sync
# Done. Your AI now has portable team standards and SDLC workflows.

If ags -V still shows an old version after reinstalling, check your PATH order. ~/Library/pnpm must come before ~/Library/pnpm/bin, then run hash -r and verify with ags -V again.

Not an engineer? You don't need to run any of the above — just describe your idea to your AI agent. See Getting Started: Product Owner.

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The Problem

Every team has coding standards. But AI agents don't know them.

You end up repeating the same instructions: "Use OnPush change detection", "Always wrap errors with context", "No business logic in handlers". And every time, you face the same trade-off:

• Too many rules = AI forgets them, wastes tokens, gets confused
• Too few rules = AI writes generic code that doesn't match your standards
• Copy-paste .cursorrules = out of date in a week, doesn't scale to teams

The Solution

Agent Skills Standard turns your engineering rules into modular, version-controlled skills that any AI agent can load on demand.

Without Skills	With Skills
3,600+ token architect prompt in every chat	~500 token skill, loaded only when relevant
Rules drift across team members' prompts	Single source of truth, synced via CLI
Works in one AI tool, copy-paste to others	Works in Cursor, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Windsurf, Trae, Kiro, Roo
AI scans all rules every time (slow, lossy)	Hierarchical lookup: ~25 lines scanned per edit

Not Another Agent Runtime

Agent Skills Standard does not force you into a new daily command system. ags is for setup, sync, validation, MCP wiring, and updates. After sync, your AI tool receives native assets:

• Claude/Roo/OpenCode commands
• Codex/Cursor/Trae skills
• Gemini TOML commands
• Copilot prompts
• Antigravity/Kiro workflow files
• MCP tools for runtime enforcement

You keep the files in your repo, customize them with .skillsrc and custom_overrides, and run workflows inside the agent you already use.

How It Works

You run: npx agent-skills-standard sync

What your AI gets:

1. AGENTS.md (router ~20 lines)
   "Editing *.ts? Check typescript/_INDEX.md"