Update Installed Skills

Goal

Guardrails

• Always use

  --dry-run

  before running a real update.
• Check what is currently installed before updating:

  npx ai-agent-skills list --installed

  .
• Never update all skills at once in production without reviewing the dry-run output.
• Use

  --format json

  to capture structured update results for logging.

Workflow

1. List currently installed skills.

npx ai-agent-skills list --installed --format json --fields name

1. Check for available updates.

npx ai-agent-skills check

1. Dry-run the update.

npx ai-agent-skills sync <skill-name> --dry-run

1. Apply the update after reviewing.

npx ai-agent-skills sync <skill-name>

1. For bulk updates, review each skill's dry-run output.

npx ai-agent-skills sync --all --dry-run

Gotchas

• Skills installed from GitHub will attempt a fresh clone during sync. If the upstream repo is gone, the update will fail gracefully.
• Manually edited SKILL.md files will be overwritten by sync. Back up customizations before syncing.
• The

  check

  command makes network requests to verify upstream sources. It may be slow or fail if sources are unreachable.