Cursor skills.

Where Cursor looks for skills

From Cursor's docs. Skills in the project are committed with it, so the whole team gets them.

How to run a skill in Cursor

• Do nothing: the agent reads each skill's description and uses the ones a task needs.
• Type / in Agent chat and pick the skill to attach it to one message.
• Use it as a custom mode for a whole session with Option+Enter on a Mac, or Alt+Enter on Windows.

Add disable-model-invocation: true to a skill that should run only when you call it, and paths with file patterns to a skill that only applies to some files.

Skills or rules?

Rules are short instructions Cursor adds to the agent's context, on every request or for matching files, so they should stay brief: the font, the accent colour, what never to do.

A skill loads only when a task needs it, so it can be long and carry examples, reference files and scripts. Use rules for the few things every change must follow, and skills for whole jobs, such as building a page in your design system or making an illustration.

How to add a skill

Copy the skill's folder into .cursor/skills in your project, or ~/.cursor/skills for every project. To start a new one, ask Cursor's built-in /create-skill. A skill's frontmatter needs a name, in lowercase with hyphens and matching its folder, and a description:

---
name: site-design
description: Our site's type, colour, layout and illustration rules. Use when building or changing any page.
paths: src/**/*.tsx
---

- Headings and text: Mona Sans. Code: Geist Mono.
- One accent colour, #1a7569, for buttons and links only.
- Every section shows the product: a screenshot or an illustration.

To bring in skills from a GitHub repository, Cursor imports them as a plugin under Customize, From GitHub Repository, or from a team marketplace.

Design skills worth adding to Cursor

Cursor's agent builds working pages, and on its defaults they share one look with every other AI-built site. A design skill gives it your decisions. Because Cursor reads .claude/skills, most Claude Code design skills work without changes: frontend-design from Anthropic for direction, Impeccable for polish and an AI-slop check, Vercel's web-design-guidelines for a code review, and Illos for illustrations.

What each one is best for: the best design skills compared.

Illustrations in Cursor

The Illos skills draw animated SVG illustrations in Shader, HUD, Isometric or Interface, and check each one. One command adds them to Cursor and every other coding agent on your machine:

npx -y illos setup

Then type /illos-isometric in Agent chat, or ask for the illustration in plain words. The skills come with Pro; the 65 free illustrations in the library need no account, and adding illustrations with your agent shows how.