What are agent skills?
Skills are portable instruction sets that teach AI coding assistants how to use Trigger.dev effectively. Unlike vendor-specific config files (.cursor/rules, CLAUDE.md), skills use an open standard that works across all major AI assistants. For example, Cursor users and Claude Code users can get the same knowledge from a single install.
Skills are installed as directories containing a SKILL.md file. Each SKILL.md includes YAML frontmatter (name, description) and markdown instructions with patterns, examples, and best practices that AI assistants automatically discover and follow.
Installation
When you runnpx skills add triggerdotdev/skills, the CLI detects your installed AI tools and copies the appropriate files to each tool’s expected location. For example, .claude/skills/, .cursor/skills/, .github/skills/, etc.
skills is an open-source CLI by Vercel. Learn more at skills.sh.Available skills
Install all skills at once, or pick the ones relevant to your current work:| Skill | Use for | Covers |
|---|---|---|
trigger-setup | First time setup, new projects | SDK install, npx trigger init, project structure |
trigger-tasks | Writing background tasks, async workflows, scheduled tasks | Triggering, waits, queues, retries, cron, metadata |
trigger-agents | LLM workflows, orchestration, multi-step AI agents | Prompt chaining, routing, parallelization, human-in-the-loop |
trigger-realtime | Live updates, progress indicators, streaming | React hooks, progress bars, streaming AI responses |
trigger-config | Project setup, build configuration | trigger.config.ts, extensions (Prisma, FFmpeg, Playwright) |
trigger-tasks; it covers the most common patterns for writing Trigger.dev tasks.

