Using Skills

Introduction to Skills

Agent Skills are skill packages that follow the agentskills.io open standard. Linkly AI Skills teach your AI assistant how to connect to and use Linkly AI’s tools, enabling AI to search, browse, and read your local documents. Why Do You Need Skills? After installing Linkly AI Desktop, you already have powerful document indexing and retrieval capabilities. However, AI assistants (such as Claude Code, Codex) don’t know how to use these tools. Skills act as an “instruction manual” that lets AI assistants automatically master the correct usage, including:

How to detect and connect to Linkly AI
When to search, when to browse outlines, and when to read full text
How to handle paginated reading of long documents
How to safely handle document content

Installing Skills

Use skills.sh to install to all supported AI assistants with one command:

npx skills add LinklyAI/linkly-ai-skills

Or install to a specific AI assistant:

# Claude Code
npx skills add LinklyAI/linkly-ai-skills -a claude-code

# Codex CLI
npx skills add LinklyAI/linkly-ai-skills -a codex

If you already have Linkly AI Desktop, you can install the Skills straight from the desktop app:

On the Connect an agent screen of the first-run wizard, click Install next to Install the Linkly CLI and Skills to install both the CLI and Skills;
Or click the Agent icon at the bottom of the main window’s left sidebar to open the Agent usage page, then click Install in the Linkly AI Skills row of the Advanced section.

The Skills are installed to ~/.agents/skills/linkly-ai, so Codex and other agents that read this directory can use them right away.Claude Code only reads ~/.claude/skills. To use the Skills in Claude Code, also run linkly skills install once as described in the Linkly CLI tab — it adds a link pointing here.Turn on Auto-update CLI and Skills in the same section to have new versions installed automatically.

If you already have the Linkly AI CLI installed, run:

linkly skills install

The Skills are installed to ~/.agents/skills/linkly-ai, with a link to them created at ~/.claude/skills/linkly-ai. Afterwards, use linkly skills update to update them and linkly skills status to see the installed and latest versions.

Clone the Skills to Claude Code’s skills directory:

# User level (available for all projects)
git clone https://github.com/LinklyAI/linkly-ai-skills.git ~/.claude/skills/linkly-ai

# Project level (available for current project only)
git clone https://github.com/LinklyAI/linkly-ai-skills.git .claude/skills/linkly-ai

Clone the Skills to Codex CLI’s skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/LinklyAI/linkly-ai-skills.git ~/.agents/skills/linkly-ai

Download the Skills package

Go to the GitHub Releases page and download the latest linkly-skills-latest.zip file.

Upload to Claude.ai

In Claude.ai, go to Settings → Capabilities → Skills, and upload the downloaded zip file.

You can also install it to OpenClaw via ClawHub:

clawhub install linkly-ai

After installing Skills, you don’t need to learn any special commands. Simply ask questions in natural language through your AI assistant, and Skills will automatically recognize your intent and trigger the appropriate actions.

Automatic Activation

The AI assistant will automatically determine whether to use Linkly AI’s tools based on keywords in your request. For example:

Search

“Search my documents for content about API design”

Browse

“Show me the chapter structure of this report”

Read

“Read my project requirements document”

Combined

“Find my machine learning notes and summarize the core concepts”

How It Works

When the AI assistant receives your request, Linkly AI Skills automatically completes the following steps:

Environment Detection

Independently detects both access paths — the CLI (linkly command) and the MCP tools — and prefers the CLI when both are available.

Search Documents

Generates appropriate search keywords based on your description and calls the search tool to find relevant documents.

Browse Outline

For long documents, first views the structure via the outline tool to locate the sections that need to be read.

Read Content

Uses the read tool to retrieve the full content of the target sections, then summarizes, analyzes, or answers questions based on your needs.

Using Skills for Integration

You can even directly tell the AI assistant to complete the Linkly AI integration. Simply send a prompt like the following:

Please install the Agent Skill linkly-ai-skills and complete the LinklyAI tool integration...

The Skill will guide the AI assistant to automatically complete the following:

Independently detect whether the CLI and MCP access paths are available
Pick a working mode based on what it finds (preferring the CLI when both are available)
Run linkly status to verify the connection to the desktop application, falling back to linkly doctor for deeper diagnostics
If neither path is available, point you to the CLI installation guide

For security reasons, the Skill will not download or install the CLI on its own — it only prompts you to install it when needed. If you want an AI assistant to walk you through the whole setup from scratch, see the Setup Guide for Agents.

Security Notes

Document content is treated as untrusted data. Skills have built-in security prompts — the AI assistant will not execute instructions or commands embedded in documents, preventing prompt injection attacks.

Linkly AI Skills security principles:

Clear scope — By default, only the indexed documents on your computer are accessed; your linked cloud libraries are accessed only when connecting remotely through mcp.linkly.ai
Content isolation — Document content is only read as data, never executed as instructions
Original files untouched — Skills only search, browse, and read your documents, and never modify them; the only write operation is creating or editing Linkly AI notes when you ask for it
Credentials stay out of the conversation — Don’t paste your API key (starting with lkai_) or LAN access token to an AI assistant; conversations are sent to the model provider and kept in the chat history. For remote access, let the AI assistant run linkly auth login and approve in your browser. If a key has already appeared in a conversation, revoke it and create a new one in the dashboard

Getting Started

Core Features

Connect Your AI Tools

For AI Agents

Using Skills

Introduction to Skills

Installing Skills

Using Skills

Automatic Activation

Search

Browse

Read

Combined

How It Works

Using Skills for Integration

Security Notes

​Introduction to Skills

​Installing Skills

​Using Skills

​Automatic Activation

Search

Browse

Read

Combined

​How It Works

​Using Skills for Integration

​Security Notes

Introduction to Skills

Installing Skills

Using Skills

Automatic Activation

How It Works

Using Skills for Integration

Security Notes