Organize and Inspect Local Agent Skills with Skill Cabinet

What Is Skill Cabinet?

Skill Cabinet is a local catalog for agent skills installed on your computer. It scans user-level drawers such as .agents, .claude, .codex, and .cursor, including Cursor plugins. It also checks other matching ~/.* /skills folders.

The application presents discovered skills in a browser-based interface. You can search the catalog, inspect each skill's content and YAML frontmatter, open additional files from its folder, and remove unwanted skills from disk.

Skill Cabinet binds only to 127.0.0.1, so its server is available through your local machine rather than a public network interface.

Key Features

• Automatic discovery: Scans supported user-level agent-tool drawers and skills folders.
• Filtering: Narrows the catalog by drawer.
• Search: Finds matching names, descriptions, paths, or frontmatter.
• Skill inspection: Displays the skill body in rendered or source form.
• Metadata access: Shows YAML frontmatter associated with a skill.
• Folder browsing: Lets you read extra files stored alongside a skill.
• Skill removal: Deletes one skill or several marked skills at once.
• Themes: Offers selectable skins through the Theme menu, with Carbon as the default.
• Keyboard navigation: Supports shortcuts for moving, searching, marking, and deleting.

Requirements

Skill Cabinet requires Node.js 20 or newer. Confirm the installed Node.js version before starting:

node --version

If the displayed major version is lower than 20, upgrade Node.js and then run the command again.

Run Skill Cabinet

Start the npm Package

The quickest way to launch the application is with npx:

npx skill-cabinet

This command starts a local server on 127.0.0.1, uses port 3781 by default, and opens the interface in your browser.

Run Directly from the GitHub Repository

You can run the repository version instead of the npm package:

npx github:subsy/skill-cabinet

Prevent Automatic Browser Opening

Set SKILL_CABINET_NO_OPEN when you want to start the server without replacing or opening a browser tab:

SKILL_CABINET_NO_OPEN=1 npx skill-cabinet

After it starts, open the local address shown by the application when you are ready.

Choose a Different Port

Set the PORT environment variable to use a port other than 3781:

PORT=4000 npx skill-cabinet

In this example, Skill Cabinet runs on 127.0.0.1:4000.

Browse and Search Your Skills

1. Start Skill Cabinet with npx skill-cabinet.
2. Wait for the local interface to open in your browser.
3. Use the drawer filter to focus on skills from a particular supported location.
4. Use search to match a skill's name, description, path, or frontmatter.
5. Select a result to inspect its contents.

Search is useful when you remember only part of a description, a directory path, or a value stored in the YAML metadata.

Inspect a Skill

After selecting a skill, you can read its body in either rendered or source form. Use the rendered view for convenient reading and the source view when you need to examine the underlying text.

You can also inspect the skill's YAML frontmatter and read extra files contained in its directory. Together, these views help you understand what a skill contains and where it is installed before making changes.

Delete Skills Carefully

Skill Cabinet can delete an individual skill or several marked skills at once. Deletion removes the complete skill directory from disk.

Warning: There is no undo. Review the selected skills and their paths carefully before deleting them.

Builtin Cursor skills and copies stored in plugin caches may return the next time the relevant tool updates. Deleting those copies therefore may not be permanent.

Use Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard commands make it faster to work through a large catalog:

• j moves to the next item.
• k moves to the previous item.
• / activates find.
• x marks an item.
• d deletes the selected or marked skill entries.

A practical workflow is to press / to search, navigate results with j and k, mark relevant entries with x, and delete only after verifying every path.

Change the Interface Theme

Open the Theme menu to switch between the available skins. Carbon is selected by default. Theme changes affect the interface appearance without changing the discovered skills or their files.

Develop Skill Cabinet Locally

To work on the source code, clone the repository and install its dependencies:

git clone git@github.com:subsy/skill-cabinet.git
cd skill-cabinet
npm install
npm run dev

Then open http://127.0.0.1:5173 in your browser.

Run a Production Build

Build the application and start it in production mode with:

npm run build
npm start

Repository contributors should consult CONTRIBUTING.md for the project's contribution guidance.

Advanced Tips

• Inspect before deleting: Check the path, source, frontmatter, and extra files to make sure you selected the intended directory.
• Combine filtering and search: First select a drawer, then search within the narrowed catalog by name, description, path, or metadata.
• Use marking for batch cleanup: Mark multiple entries with x, but verify the complete set before pressing d.
• Keep your current browser state: Use SKILL_CABINET_NO_OPEN=1 when you do not want startup to open the interface automatically.
• Avoid port conflicts: Start the application with a different PORT value if port 3781 is already occupied.
• Expect managed skills to return: Cursor builtins and plugin-cache copies can be restored by later tool updates.

Conclusion

Skill Cabinet provides a focused local interface for discovering and reviewing agent skills spread across multiple tool directories. With searchable metadata, source and rendered views, folder inspection, themes, keyboard controls, and batch deletion, it simplifies local skill management. Because deletion is permanent, use its inspection tools to verify every skill before removing it.

Skill Cabinet is released under the MIT License.