What are skills?
Skills are Markdown files that coding agents read at the start of a session to learn how to use a tool. Merfolk ships two bundled skills that teach agents how to work with diagram source, use the CLI’s conventions, and return a result that people can review in the shared workspace.
Bundled skills
merfolk
The core skill. Teaches agents:
- How to use authenticated CLI commands (
merfolk login) - The
--jsonoutput convention and what to expect from it - Exit code semantics
- How to discover available commands
merfolk-diagrams
The diagrams skill. Teaches agents:
- How to list, get, create, and edit diagrams
- How to read and post comments (with
positionX/positionYcoordinates) - How to use diagram IDs in workflows
- When to use
app.merfolk.ioURLs for cross-referencing
Installing skills
merfolk skills installThis writes the skill files to the default directory for your agent. See merfolk skills install for flags and per-agent paths.
Where files are written
| Agent | Default path |
|---|---|
| OpenCode | ~/.config/opencode/skills/merfolk/SKILL.md |
| Claude Code | ~/.claude/skills/merfolk/SKILL.md |
| Codex | ~/.codex/skills/merfolk/SKILL.md |
| Custom | Specify with --dir |