Install SkillCatalog

Install SkillCatalog before you follow Getting started. This page covers what SkillCatalog needs, how to install it on a Mac or on Linux, and how to update or remove it later.

Before you install

SkillCatalog has a desktop app for Macs, which includes the command-line tool skc, and a Linux build of skc on its own:

Windows, Intel Macs, and Linux on arm64 are not supported.

SkillCatalog also needs Git 2.25 or later, because it runs git to clone, pull, and push catalogs. Those commands use the SSH keys or credential helper you already set up for Git, so SkillCatalog needs no credentials of its own.

SkillCatalog commits catalog changes under your Git identity, the name and email in your Git settings. The first time the desktop app opens, it shows that identity, and it asks for a name and email when Git has none. If you use only skc, set them yourself:

git config --global user.name "<your name>"
git config --global user.email "<your email>"

Install on macOS

Install SkillCatalog with Homebrew:

brew install --cask humanfrontier/tap/skillcatalog

This puts SkillCatalog in your Applications folder and adds skc to your PATH. That skc is the copy inside the app, so the app and the command-line tool always have the same version. To check that it works, print the version:

skc --version

Then open SkillCatalog. Its first-launch setup checks Git and your identity, then asks which AI tools get skills. It also adds the Essentials catalog, whose skills teach AI tools how to use SkillCatalog, and offers to give those skills to your tools.

Install the CLI on Linux

If you use Homebrew on Linux, install skc with it:

brew install humanfrontier/tap/skc

Without Homebrew, download skc-v<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz and its .sha256 file from the latest release. Replace <version> with the release number in the commands below, which check the download and put skc on your PATH:

sha256sum -c skc-v<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz.sha256
tar -xzf skc-v<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
sudo install -m 755 skc /usr/local/bin/skc

The Essentials catalog comes only with the desktop app, so skc on Linux does not add it.

Update

The desktop app checks for a new version when it opens and each time you return to its window. When it finds one, the sidebar shows Version <version> available. Choose Install update, then Restart. The app never installs an update you did not choose, and you can check at any time: open Settings, then choose Check for updates under Updates.

Updating the app also updates skc, because skc is part of the app. With Homebrew, you can update both from a terminal instead:

brew upgrade --cask skillcatalog

On Linux, run brew upgrade skc, or download the new release and install it as above.

Uninstall

Uninstalling removes the app and skc, but it leaves your catalog clones and every skill SkillCatalog delivered. So before you uninstall, run skc sync, which pushes any catalog change that exists only on your machine. If you also want the delivered skills gone, turn off each AI tool first, which removes the skills SkillCatalog delivered to it.

Then uninstall. On macOS, run brew uninstall --cask skillcatalog. On Linux, run brew uninstall skc, or delete the skc file.

These files stay until you delete them yourself:

• ~/.skillcatalog/, which holds your catalog clones, profiles, settings, and logs.
• Skills delivered for AI tools you did not turn off.
• In your repositories, the files in .skillcatalog/ and the lines SkillCatalog added to .gitignore.
• On macOS, the app's own data in ~/Library/Application Support/com.skillcatalog.desktop and ~/Library/Caches/com.skillcatalog.desktop. brew uninstall --zap --cask skillcatalog removes these two folders as well.

skc uninstall is a different command: run in a repository, it removes that repository's own skills, as Give a repository its own skills describes.