Update External Skills
Update all third-party skills installed via the skills CLI to their latest versions.
External skills are those installed from remote repositories with npx skills add. Locally authored skills (created manually in ~/.claude/skills/ or .claude/skills/) are not affected.
Usage
Give the user the command:
! npx skills updateThe command checks all installed skills against their source repositories and updates any that have newer versions available.
If the update fails
- Network error: Check internet connection. The CLI needs to reach GitHub/GitLab.
- Permission error: Check write access to
~/.claude/skills/(or the agent's skill directory). - Single skill fails: Reinstall just that skill:
npx skills add <owner/repo> --skill <name>
Check what is installed
npx skills listShows all installed skills, their source repositories, and current versions.
Important
- This only updates skills installed via
npx skills addfrom remote repos. - Skills you created locally or symlinked manually are not tracked and won't be affected.
- After updating, restart Claude Code for the new skill versions to take effect.