Supercharging Cursor: The Ultimate Guide to Adding Agent Skills

Cursor has quickly become the go-to IDE for engineers who want to code at the speed of thought. But if you’ve been using the Cursor Agent (Cmd + I), you might have noticed it sometimes needs a bit of guidance to follow your specific architectural patterns or use specialized tools correctly.

By using Agent Skills, you can give Cursor "permanent memories" and specialized capabilities that persist across every session.

What Are Cursor Agent Skills?

Cursor supports the Agent Skills open standard. This means that instead of overloading your project with massive "Rules for AI" files, you can create modular, portable skills that the agent only pulls into its context when they are relevant.

The Benefits:

• Token Efficiency: Unlike global project rules, skills use "Dynamic Context Discovery." They are only loaded when the agent decides the current task matches the skill's description.
• Portability: You can move a skill folder from one project to another or share it with your team.
• Multi-Agent Support: A skill created for Cursor will also work in Claude Code or Antigravity!

Where Do Cursor Skills Live?

Before you create a skill, you need to decide its scope:

How to Create Your First Cursor Skill

A skill in Cursor is simply a folder containing a mandatory SKILL.md file.

Step 1: The Structure

Create a new directory for your skill. Let's say we want to create a "Database Schema Architect" skill:

.cursor/skills/db-architect/
├── SKILL.md
└── references/
    └── schema-best-practices.md

Step 2: Write the SKILL.md

The secret to a great Cursor skill is in the YAML frontmatter. This is what the agent reads to decide if it should activate the skill.

---
name: db-architect
description: Use this skill when the user asks to create or modify database schemas, migrations, or Prisma models.
---

# Database Architect Instructions
When this skill is active, you must:
1. Ensure all table names use `snake_case` and are plural.
2. Every table must include `created_at` and `updated_at` timestamps.
3. Refer to the naming conventions in `./references/schema-best-practices.md`.
4. After generating a migration, remind the user to run `npx prisma generate`.

Step 3: Triggering the Skill

In Cursor, you don't need to do anything special to "activate" it. Simply open the Agent (Cmd + I) and say:

"I need to add a new 'Orders' table to my database."

Because your skill description mentioned "modifying database schemas," the Cursor Agent will automatically "discover" the skill and apply your strict naming conventions.

Pro Tip: Installing Skills via GitHub

One of Cursor's most powerful features is the ability to import skills directly from remote repositories.

1. Open Cursor Settings (Cmd + Shift + J).
2. Navigate to Rules.
3. In the Project Rules section, click Add Rule.
4. Select Remote Rule (GitHub) and paste the URL of a skill repository.

This allows teams to maintain a "Single Source of Truth" for their agent's capabilities.

Ready to Upgrade Your Cursor Experience?

Creating skills from scratch is a great way to customize your workflow, but you can save hours by using community-vetted templates.

At Skilllm, we have curated a library of high-performance Agent Skills specifically optimized for the Cursor Agent. Whether you need a "Production-Grade Dockerizer" or a "Clean Architecture Enforcer," our skills are ready to be dropped into your .cursor/skills/ folder today.

Conclusion

Cursor is more than just a code editor; it is a platform for your own personal AI workforce. By mastering Agent Skills, you transition from "prompting an AI" to "building a specialist."

Would you like me to help you draft a specific SKILL.md for a workflow you use frequently in Cursor?