User guide · what you do, what you see

Using the ainb Skill Manager

One screen to keep the skills, agents, commands and plugins for all your AI coding tools — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, Gemini — in sync. Install from a repo or the catalog, adopt what's already on your machine, keep your own skills in a library, and push your edits back upstream — across every tool at once.

→ Prefer the internals? Read "How it works"

1Getting in

Run ainb, then press m (or pick Skills (manager) in the sidebar). Here's the whole thing in motion — open, browse the list, filter, sync, leave:

TUI lifecycle: open Skill Manager, navigate, search, sync — The Skill Manager, end to end — press m, see your skills, filter, sync, quit

2What you see

Sources

Where your skills come from — repos you added, the catalog, your own machine.

Units

The actual skills / agents / commands / plugins, each with a status glyph on the right.

Detail

Info on whichever unit you've selected — its URI, where it's deployed, how often you've used it.

At the very bottom is the help bar — every key you can press is listed there.

3The first time you open it

If you've never set it up, a banner pops up: "Detected existing units — import them?" It scanned your tool homes and found skills and plugins you already have installed.

Enter	Adopt everything it found into management
d	See the per-tool breakdown first
s	Skip for now (press m later to bring it back)

4The keys, in plain words

Press	What it does
i	Add a source — paste a repo like `gh:owner/repo`
b	Browse the catalog — search for new skills online, Enter to install
l	Your library — skills you wrote yourself
u	Update the selected skill to the latest upstream
c	Check which skills are behind upstream (refreshes the status glyphs)
r	Remove the selected skill from your tools
s	Sync — push your local edits back to the source repo
/	Search / filter the list
↑↓ j k	Move the cursor · g / G jump to first / last
q Esc	Leave the Skill Manager

5The status glyphs

The rightmost column of the Units list tells you, at a glance, whether each skill is current:

✓ up to date

⚠ behind upstream — press u

▲ you're ahead

⟷ diverged

… checking

6The things you'll actually do

Adopt what's already installed

Press m → the discovery banner appears → press Enter.

You see: the Sources and Units panels fill with the skills + plugins you already had on disk.

Find & install a new skill

Press b → type react → arrow to a result → Enter.

You see: search results from the catalog; the chosen one installs into your tools and appears in Units.

Keep your own skills

Write a SKILL.md folder → press l.

You see: your hand-written skills in one Library view; promote one to a git repo to share it.

Push an edit back upstream

Edit a deployed skill file → press m → select it → s.

You see: a sync: <name> notification; your change is committed + pushed to the source repo.

⬡

It manages plugins, too. Unlike other skill managers, ainb understands Claude marketplace plugins — the discovery banner counts them separately ("Marketplace plugins: N") and manages them like any other unit.

7Prefer the terminal?

Everything the screen does has a command. Here's a full skill lifecycle on the CLI — add a source, install, check for drift, sync an edit back, remove:

CLI lifecycle: source add, install, check, sync, remove — The same lifecycle on the command line

`ainb skill browse <q>`	search the catalog
`ainb source add <uri>`	add a repo of skills
`ainb skill install <uri>`	install a unit to your tools
`ainb skill check`	which skills are behind upstream
`ainb skill update <uri>`	update to latest
`ainb skill sync --to-repo`	push your edits upstream
`ainb skill library list`	your own skills
`ainb skill scan`	where each on-disk skill came from

→ How it works (the internals)