Skills for Claude Code

A Skill is an installable package that gives the Claude Code AI agent specialized knowledge and tools for a specific area. cotctl ships a set of Skills — one per resource type — that turn a general-purpose agent into a Cotalker authoring specialist. This page is the reference for the cotctl skills command that manages them. For the bigger picture of how Skills fit with the RAG and the agent, see AI-assisted authoring.

Listing what's available

cotctl skills list

This shows every available Skill and its installation status, which can be [not installed], [local], [global], or [local, global].

Installing Skills

cotctl skills install [name] [options]

Run it without a name to get an interactive checklist and pick what you want. Provide a name to install a specific one.

Option	Description
--all	Install every available Skill
--local	Install to .claude/skills/ (this project only)
--global	Install to ~/.claude/skills/ (all projects)
--no-mcp	Skip the Cotalker RAG/MCP configuration step

If you don't pass --local or --global, cotctl asks you interactively which scope to use.

Installing also offers to connect the RAG. After installing, cotctl offers to configure the MCP connection to Cotalker's documentation service — the "live grounding" half of the setup. Skip it with --no-mcp, or set it up later with cotctl mcp install. For most partners, accepting it is the right call.

The available Skills

Each Skill specializes the agent in one resource area:

Skill	What it gives the agent
cotctl-surveys	Creating and modifying survey YAML
cotctl-workflows	Creating, scaffolding, and modifying workflows
cotctl-properties	Generating property types and properties
cotctl-roles	Creating and managing access roles and permissions
cotctl-apply	Applying resources to Cotalker environments
cotctl-export	Exporting and querying resources
cotalker-docs	General knowledge of the Cotalker platform

A common starting point is to install them all:

cotctl skills install --all --local

Scopes: local vs. global

Where a Skill is installed determines which projects can use it:

Scope	Directory	Applies to
Local	.claude/skills/	The current project only
Global	~/.claude/skills/	All your projects

Use local when you're working on a specific client's repository and want the Skills versioned alongside it; use global when you want them available everywhere you work.

Uninstalling

cotctl skills uninstall [name] [options]

Option	Description
--all	Uninstall every Skill from the selected scope
--local	Uninstall from the current project
--global	Uninstall from the global configuration

When you uninstall with --all, cotctl also asks whether to remove the RAG/MCP configuration that was set up alongside the Skills.

See also

• AI-assisted authoring — how Skills, the RAG, and the agent work together
• MCP integration — the documentation RAG the Skills offer to connect