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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 run npx 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.
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills
skills is an open-source CLI by Vercel. Learn more at skills.sh.
The result: your AI assistant understands Trigger.dev’s specific patterns for exports, schema validation, error handling, retries, and more.

Available skills

Install all skills at once, or pick the ones relevant to your current work:
# Install all Trigger.dev skills
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills

# Or install individual skills
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills --skill trigger-tasks
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills --skill trigger-agents
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills --skill trigger-config
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills --skill trigger-realtime
npx skills add triggerdotdev/skills --skill trigger-setup
SkillUse forCovers
trigger-setupFirst time setup, new projectsSDK install, npx trigger init, project structure
trigger-tasksWriting background tasks, async workflows, scheduled tasksTriggering, waits, queues, retries, cron, metadata
trigger-agentsLLM workflows, orchestration, multi-step AI agentsPrompt chaining, routing, parallelization, human-in-the-loop
trigger-realtimeLive updates, progress indicators, streamingReact hooks, progress bars, streaming AI responses
trigger-configProject setup, build configurationtrigger.config.ts, extensions (Prisma, FFmpeg, Playwright)
Not sure which skill to install? Install trigger-tasks; it covers the most common patterns for writing Trigger.dev tasks.

Supported AI assistants

Skills work with any AI coding assistant that supports the Agent Skills standard, including:

Next steps