curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FridrichMethod/awesome-skills/main/install.sh | bash

Why this exists

Agent skills are how you give Claude Code or Codex CLI deep, reusable expertise in a domain — a folder with a SKILL.md and supporting scripts. The community has produced thousands of them across dozens of repos, each with their own scope, license, and quality bar.

awesome-skills does three things:

1. Aggregates the best Claude Code / Codex skills from 15 upstream curated collections — bio/scientific, academic writing, official Anthropic, Superpowers, Karpathy, and major community libraries.
2. Filters out things that break installs (Git LFS pointers, files >40 MB, bundled vector DBs, stale .gitattributes).
3. Auto-syncs every Sunday so your skill library stays current without manual work.

The result is one URL + one curl command that bootstraps a fresh laptop with 1,800+ vetted skills ready for use in Claude Code or Codex.

Contents

• Quick install
  • Flags
  • Env overrides
  • Common recipes
  • From a local clone
• Sources
• Highlights
  • AI4Protein / structural biology
  • Journal & paper writing
• Auto-sync workflow
• Repo layout
• Contributing
• Security
• Licensing
• Acknowledgements

Quick install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FridrichMethod/awesome-skills/main/install.sh | bash

The installer:

1. Downloads a tarball of this repo into a tempdir.
2. rsyncs skills/ into both ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.codex/skills/.
3. Cleans up the tempdir on exit. Nothing left on disk.

Requirements: bash, curl, tar, rsync. All four are standard on macOS and most Linux distros. On a fresh Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install -y rsync.

Flags

curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash -s -- --claude-only

Env overrides

[!IMPORTANT]
When using curl … | bash, env vars must be set on bash, not on curl. Either export them first or place them on the pipe's right side:

# ✓ works
export SKILLS_CLAUDE_DEST=/custom/claude
curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash

# ✓ also works
curl -fsSL .../install.sh | SKILLS_CLAUDE_DEST=/custom/claude bash

# ✗ silently ignored — only curl sees the var
SKILLS_CLAUDE_DEST=/custom/claude curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash

Common recipes

# Preview only — no files written
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FridrichMethod/awesome-skills/main/install.sh \
  | bash -s -- --dry-run

# Mirror exactly (remove local skills that aren't in the repo)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FridrichMethod/awesome-skills/main/install.sh \
  | bash -s -- --delete

# Install only Codex skills, into a custom dir
export SKILLS_CODEX_DEST=/opt/agents/codex/skills
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FridrichMethod/awesome-skills/main/install.sh \
  | bash -s -- --codex-only

# Shell alias for periodic refresh
alias sync-skills='curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FridrichMethod/awesome-skills/main/install.sh | bash'

From a local clone (rare)

If you already have the repo cloned, ./install.sh detects the adjacent skills/ directory and skips the download.

Sources

Skills are aggregated from these upstream repositories — credit and gratitude to the original authors. Sources are grouped by scope; within scripts/sync_skills.py they are listed in install order (later = wins on name collision). Currently 15 sources.

Bio / scientific / medical

Academic / writing

General-purpose & foundational

On name collision, later sources in the install order overwrite earlier ones. The order in scripts/sync_skills.py places specialized protein-design and academic-writing skills last so they win conflicts.

Highlights

AI4Protein / structural biology

Journal & paper writing

Auto-sync workflow

A weekly GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/sync-skills.yml) keeps the repo current:

flowchart LR
    A[Sunday 03:00 UTC] --> B[Checkout repo]
    B --> C[Run scripts/sync_skills.py]
    C --> D[Clone each upstream<br/>shallow into tempdir]
    D --> E[Find skill roots<br/>de-dupe nested]
    E --> F[Filter:<br/>.gitattributes / LFS<br/>>40MB files<br/>vector DBs]
    F --> G[Copy into skills/<br/>last-source-wins]
    G --> H{Changes?}
    H -- yes --> I[Bot commits +<br/>pushes to main]
    H -- no --> J[Exit clean]

Trigger it manually:

gh workflow run sync-skills.yml -R FridrichMethod/awesome-skills

Or via the Actions tab → Run workflow.

Each successful run posts a per-source change summary table in the job summary.

Repo layout

awesome-skills/
├── skills/                          ← 1,668 skill dirs (managed by sync; do not edit directly)
├── install.sh                       ← one-line installer (curl|bash compatible)
├── scripts/
│   └── sync_skills.py               ← aggregation logic
├── .github/
│   ├── workflows/sync-skills.yml    ← weekly auto-sync
│   ├── ISSUE_TEMPLATE/              ← new-source · broken-skill · installer-bug
│   ├── PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
│   └── dependabot.yml
├── README.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
├── SECURITY.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── LICENSE
├── .pre-commit-config.yaml
└── .editorconfig

Contributing

PRs, issue reports, and source suggestions are all welcome. Don't edit files inside skills/ directly — those are managed by the weekly sync. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full workflow, including how to:

• Suggest a new upstream source (template)
• Report a broken skill (template)
• Report an installer / workflow bug (template)
• Test the installer and sync script locally

Setup hooks once:

pip install pre-commit && pre-commit install

Security

Found a vulnerability in the installer, sync script, or workflows? Please disclose privately via GitHub Security Advisories — see SECURITY.md.

Vulnerabilities in upstream skill content should be reported to the source repo (see the Sources table).

Licensing

The curation, installer, and workflows in this repo are released under the MIT License.

Skill content inside skills/ retains its upstream license. Each skills/<name>/ directory may carry its own LICENSE, README.md, or inline notice from the original author. Review them before commercial reuse.

Acknowledgements

This project would not exist without the work of:

Bio / scientific / medical

• K-Dense AI for the scientific-skills + scientific-writer collections
• FreedomIntelligence for OpenClaw Medical Skills
• GPTomics for bioSkills
• Jaechang Hits for SciAgent-Skills
• Adaptyv Bio for the protein-design pipeline skills

Academic / writing

• Imbad0202 and lishix520 for the academic paper pipelines
• Yuan1z0825 for nature-skills — Nature journal writing, polishing, figures, citations, and peer-review response
• Joe Amditis for the journalism skills

General-purpose / foundational

• Jesse Vincent (obra) for Superpowers — the methodology framework that anchors how skills get built
• Anthropic for the official skills and plugins-official directories
• Andrej Karpathy (via forrestchang) for the famous CLAUDE.md
• wshobson for the agents multi-plugin collection
• The Anthropic Claude Code team for designing the SKILL.md format

If you use this repo and find it useful, ⭐ the upstream sources, not just this one.

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