Agent Skills

EmDash publishes agent skills for AI coding assistants. A skill is a folder of instructions and reference material that an assistant loads when a task needs it. With the EmDash skills installed, an assistant follows current EmDash patterns for schema, queries, plugins, and the CLI.

Skill	Use it for
building-emdash-site	Schema and seed files, content queries, Portable Text, menus, taxonomies, deployment
creating-plugins	Sandboxed and native plugins: hooks, routes, storage, admin UI
emdash-cli	Managing an EmDash site from the command line
upgrading-emdash	Upgrading packages, project code, skills, and core migrations
wordpress-theme-to-emdash	Porting a WordPress theme to an EmDash site
wordpress-plugin-to-emdash	Porting WordPress plugin behavior to EmDash

The skills are published in the emdash-cms/skills repository with each EmDash release.

Skills in EmDash templates

A project created with npm create emdash includes building-emdash-site, creating-plugins, and emdash-cli in .agents/skills/. A plugin scaffolded with the plugin CLI’s init command includes creating-plugins. Assistants that support project-level Agent Skills load them without further setup. The .claude/skills compatibility link points to the same files.

These copies stay at the version the project was created with. Install the skills from the repository to update them or to add the WordPress porting skills.

Install the skills

Skills CLI

The skills command supports Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, and other assistants. Run it in your project:

npx skills add emdash-cms/skills

It asks which skills and assistants to install for. Add --skill <name> to choose skills up front, or -g to install for your user account instead of the current project.

Codex

Add the EmDash marketplace and install its plugin with the Codex CLI:

codex plugin marketplace add emdash-cms/skills
codex plugin add emdash@emdash

The plugin includes all EmDash skills. Start a new Codex task after installing it.

Claude Code

Add the repository as a plugin marketplace, then install the emdash plugin:

/plugin marketplace add emdash-cms/skills
/plugin install emdash@emdash

Claude Code names the installed skills with an emdash: prefix, for example emdash:building-emdash-site.

GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Factory Droid can also install the repository as a plugin. The skills repository README lists the current instructions for each assistant.

Note

The WordPress porting skills link to building-emdash-site and creating-plugins. Install those two alongside them.

Update the skills

Skills CLI

Update project-level skills with the following command:

npx skills update

Add -g to update user-level skills instead.

Codex

Refresh the EmDash marketplace with the following command:

codex plugin marketplace upgrade emdash

Claude Code

Run /plugin marketplace update emdash, or turn on auto-update for the emdash marketplace in /plugin.

For other assistants, follow their plugin update flow or run the install command again.

Report a problem

The skills are maintained in the skills/ folder of the EmDash repository. Open issues and pull requests there. The emdash-cms/skills repository does not accept them.