netclaw skill

netclaw skill shows what skills the agent has loaded, pulls updates from skill servers, checks a skill file before you rely on it, and manages the external directories netclaw reads. list and sync talk to the running daemon. Every other subcommand reads and writes files and works without it.

For what skills are and how netclaw uses them, see Skills overview.

Usage

netclaw skill [subcommand] [options]

With no subcommand, netclaw skill runs list.

Subcommands

Subcommand	Needs daemon	Description
`list`	Yes	List every skill the daemon has loaded (default)
`sync`	Yes	Run a skill server sync pass now
`show <name>`	No	Show one skill’s details and full content
`validate <path>`	No	Check a `SKILL.md` or flat `.md` file
`remove <name>`	No	Delete a native skill
`issues`	No	Show skills with structural problems or shadowed by a higher tier
`search <query>`	No	Find skills by name, display name or description
`source list`	No	List external skill sources
`source add <name> --path <dir>`	No	Add a directory as a source
`source add <name> --well-known <alias>`	No	Add a well-known source (`claude-code` or `open-code`)
`source remove <name>`	No	Remove a source from config
`source enable <name>`	No	Enable a source
`source disable <name>`	No	Disable a source without removing it

The offline subcommands scan the native directory (~/.netclaw/skills/) and your external sources. They don’t see skills synced from a skill server or MCP prompt skills, so use list to see everything.

Skill classifications

The SOURCE column in list and search takes one of these values:

Source	Where it comes from	Mutable
`system`	`~/.netclaw/skills/.system/`, restored from the daemon binary on every start	No
`native`	`~/.netclaw/skills/`, including skills synced from a skill server	Yes for your own skills
`external`	A directory configured with `skill source`	At the source
`mcp`	A prompt from a connected MCP server, `list` only	No

Skills synced from a skill server live in ~/.netclaw/skills/.server-feeds/<feed>/, so list labels them native. They aren’t yours to edit. skill_manage refuses them, and the next sync restores any file you change. skill source doesn’t manage them either. Add servers in netclaw config or SkillFeeds in netclaw.json. See Skill feeds.

Examples

List loaded skills

netclaw skill list

NAME                                      SOURCE      VERSION     STATUS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
flat-note                                 native      -           ok
hello-greeter                             native      1.0.0       ok
incident-summary                          native      1.1.0       ok
k8s-log-triage                            native      0.2.0       ok
agent-coordination                        system      1.5.3       ok
netclaw-memory                            system      1.14.3      ok
netclaw-operations                        system      2.144.0     ok
netclaw-projects                          system      1.4.0       ok
run-reminder                              system      1.0.2       ok
search-citation                           system      1.1.4       ok
skill-authoring                           system      1.12.0      ok
subagent-authoring                        system      1.6.2       ok
web-content-retrieval                     system      1.0.0       ok

13 skill(s)

netclaw skill list output with a table of 13 skills, four native and nine system, all with status ok

The four native rows are two local skills and two from a skill-server feed, and the nine system skills ship with netclaw. MCP prompt skills join the same table when a server provides them.

list reads the daemon’s live registry, which is the only view that includes MCP prompt skills. It lists accepted skills only, so STATUS is always ok. Use netclaw skill issues for rejected ones. If the daemon isn’t reachable, list prints Daemon unavailable: ... and exits 1. There’s no fallback to a disk scan. Start it with netclaw daemon start, or docker restart <container> in Docker.

Sync feeds now

netclaw skill sync

Waiting for the daemon's skill sync pass. Press Ctrl+C to stop this wait.
Skill sync pass a304191e2ce04fc28782ad22f8385c2d
corp-skills: ok changed=0 unchanged=2 rejected=0 failed=0 sidecar=complete
Inventory: ok accepted=13 rejected=0

netclaw skill sync output reporting one feed, corp-skills, with two unchanged skills, and an inventory of 13 accepted

The feed line counts what changed on this pass, and the inventory line is the daemon’s total after the refresh.

sync starts a pass for every enabled skill feed right away instead of waiting for SkillFeeds.SyncIntervalMinutes. If a pass is already running, it waits for that one. It takes no flags and saves no config. Ctrl+C stops the wait, not the pass.

It exits 1 when a feed reports failed or rejected above zero, when the inventory refresh fails, or when the daemon is unreachable. Each feed’s sidecar= value (complete, absent, failed, not-run) reports the subagent pass. See Skill feeds for what each means.

Show a skill

netclaw skill show hello-greeter

Name:        hello-greeter
Display:     Hello Greeter
Source:      native
Version:     1.0.0
Category:    -
License:     -
Path:        /home/netclaw/.netclaw/skills/hello-greeter/SKILL.md
Flat file:   False
Resources:   references/tone.md, scripts/stamp.sh
Description: Greet the user by name and mention today's weekday.

--- content ---
(full SKILL.md follows)

Resources: appears when the skill has supporting files. show finds skills by name in the native and external directories, so a feed skill answers [FAIL] skill 'name' not found.

Validate a skill file

netclaw skill validate ./my-skill/SKILL.md

[OK] Valid skill file.
  Name:        my-skill
  Description: Does something useful.
  Version:     1.0.0
  License:     -

A bad file says what’s wrong and exits 1:

[FAIL] MissingDescription: Skill frontmatter must include a non-empty description.

validate applies the native rules: the frontmatter name must match the directory (or file) name, and symlinks aren’t followed. A skill that loads fine from an external source can still fail here for either reason.

Once a skill validates, put it in ~/.netclaw/skills/ as name/SKILL.md or name.md. The daemon rescans when files change, so list shows it without a restart.

Check for problems

netclaw skill issues

NAME                      KIND                            MESSAGE
------------------------------------------------------------------
broken-skill              MissingDescription              Skill frontmatter must include a non-empty description.

1 issue(s)

issues is an offline structural scan of the native and external directories. It reports bad frontmatter, name mismatches, symlinks and skills shadowed by a higher tier. A copy shadowed by a system skill shows as DuplicateName. It doesn’t report skill server rejections. Those go to the daemon log and the counts in skill sync.

Search skills

netclaw skill search greeter

NAME                      SOURCE      VERSION     DESCRIPTION
----------------------------------------------------------
hello-greeter             native      1.0.0       Greet the user by name and mention today's weekday.

1 match(es)

Remove a skill

netclaw skill remove my-old-skill

remove deletes native skills only. A system skill fails with cannot remove system skill, and an external skill fails with cannot remove external skill. Delete the files at the source. Removal is permanent, because native skills have no history.

Manage external sources

skill source manages local directories. It edits netclaw.json, and the running daemon restarts itself to pick up the change. See External skills for the config shape and the plugin scope of the claude-code alias.

netclaw skill source list
netclaw skill source add my-claude --well-known claude-code
netclaw skill source add team-skills --path /opt/company/skills
netclaw skill source disable team-skills
netclaw skill source enable team-skills
netclaw skill source remove team-skills

Alias	Reads
`claude-code`	`~/.claude/skills/`, `~/.claude/commands/`, and `~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/*/skills/`
`open-code`	`~/.open-code/skills/`

--path fails with [FAIL] directory not found if the directory doesn’t exist. Names have to be unique. --well-known sources get AllowSymlinks: true, and --path sources don’t. remove deletes the config entry and leaves your skill files alone. With no sources configured, source list prints any well-known directories it finds on disk and the command to add them.

With no action, netclaw skill source lists your sources. An unknown action prints the usage text.

Frontmatter

The SKILL.md format, including the invocable key and its default, is in Skills overview. Unknown keys are ignored without a warning. A skill with user-invocable: false stays a / command, because the key is invocable.

Skills overview: tiers, precedence, formats and trust
Skill feeds: configure skill servers and read the sync output
External skills: local directories and the Claude Code alias
netclaw config: the Skill Sources screen
netclaw stats: stats skills shows which skills the agent loads

Resources

AgentSkills.io: the SKILL.md format specification
Cloudflare Agent Skills Discovery RFC: the discovery protocol behind skill feeds
netclaw skill-server: the self-hosted skill registry