# Getting started with the Chainguard Agent Skills public registry

URL: https://edu.chainguard.dev/chainguard/agent-skills/public-registry.md
Last Modified: June 8, 2026
Tags: Agent Skills, Overview

Browse, inspect, install, and run hardened agent skills from Chainguard's public registry with chainctl.

Chainguard publishes a curated set of hardened agent skills in a public registry at skills.cgr.dev/chainguard. Anyone with chainctl can browse and install them — no entitlement and no legal terms required. The Chainguard Agent Skills public registry is pull-only: you can install skills from the registry, but you can’t push your own skills to it.
This guide walks through the full workflow: listing the available skills, inspecting one, pulling it to audit how Chainguard hardened it, installing it, and running it with an agent.
Note: Chainguard Agent Skills is in beta.
Prerequisites To follow this guide, you need chainctl v0.2.282 or later, installed. Refer to our guide on How to Install chainctl if you don’t have it yet.
Unlike a private Chainguard skills registry, the public registry requires no entitlement, terms acceptance, or organization membership. You do need a Chainguard account to list and pull skills, but you don’t need to be a customer.
List available skills Sign in, then browse the skills published in Chainguard’s public registry with the list subcommand. The --recursive flag lists skills across every owner in the registry:
chainctl auth login chainctl skills list --group chainguard --recursive NAME | LATEST TAG | UPDATED --------------------------------|------------|-------------- agentspace-so/agentspace | latest | 21 hours ago antfu/antfu | latest | 21 hours ago antfu/nuxt | latest | 21 hours ago antfu/vitest | latest | 21 hours ago antfu/vue | latest | 21 hours ago anthropics/doc-coauthoring | latest | 21 hours ago anthropics/frontend-design | latest | 21 hours ago apollographql/apollo-client | latest | 21 hours ago . . .To list the skills from a single upstream owner, name it in the --group value:
chainctl skills list --group chainguard/anthropics TYPE | NAME | LATEST TAG | UPDATED -------|-----------------|------------|------------ skill | doc-coauthoring | latest | 1 hour ago skill | frontend-design | latest | 1 hour ago Describe a skill To retrieve a skill’s reference, digest, tags, and metadata, use the describe subcommand. The output records the upstream source and the exact commit Chainguard hardened from:
chainctl skills describe skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/github/add-educational-comments:latest FIELD | VALUE -----------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Display Name | add-educational-comments Reference | chainguard/github/add-educational-comments Install Name | chainguard-github-add-educational-comments OCI URL | skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/github/add-educational-comments:latest Description | Add educational comments to the file specified, or prompt asking for file to comment if one is not provided. License | MIT Upstream | github.com/github/awesome-copilot/skills/add-educational-comments Upstream Commit | cf4347e88c2e40a9aabe5801748ec6bf924c09be License Source | LICENSE Tag | cf4347e88c2e40a9aabe5801748ec6bf924c09be Digest | sha256:59b781f87f82aba08ccf622b60a31ee5b8fbb27fa447ed5910850d4320505735 Size | 1.1 KB Published | 1 day ago Pull a skill to inspect it Where install drops a skill straight into your agent’s skills directory, pull writes the skill’s files to a directory you choose so you can inspect them first:
chainctl skills pull skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/github/add-educational-comments:latest ./add-educational-commentsSkill written to: /home/linky/add-educational-commentsEvery hardened skill ships with a HARDENING.md that records the upstream source, the exact commit Chainguard hardened from, and every change the hardening engine made:
cat add-educational-comments/HARDENING.md# Hardening Report: github.com/github/awesome-copilot/skills/add-educational-comments | Field | Value | |---|---| | Upstream SHA | `cf4347e88c2e40a9aabe5801748ec6bf924c09be` | | Hardened at | 2026-06-09T23:14:22Z | | Files processed | 2 | | .md files (clean after harden) | 1 | | .md files (attempts exhausted) | 0 | | Non-.md files (copied verbatim) | 1 | ## Markdown files ### `SKILL.md` - Status: **clean** - Attempts used: 2 - Findings + fixes applied: | Attempt | Rule | Severity | Finding | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | `minimal-permissions` | high | The skill's purpose is to statically analyze and add comments to code files. It does not require the ability to execute the code to fulfill its objectives. The prompt's rules about not 'breaking execution' are constraints on the output, not a requirement to test the code by running it in a live environment. | ## Verbatim files - `LICENSE`Here, the engine flagged minimal-permissions: the skill only needs to read and comment on files, so the hardened version drops the implied permission to execute them.
Install a skill Download and install the skill to make it available to agents on your machine with the install subcommand:
chainctl skills install skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/github/add-educational-comments:latestThis command automatically detects any agents on your machine and places the skill into their relevant directories. The following example output shows the results on a machine where Claude Code is present:
Installing github/add-educational-comments AGENT | LOCATION | MODE -------------|-----------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Claude Code | .claude/skills/chainguard-github-add-educational-comments | symlink → ../../.agents/skills/chainguard-github-add-educational-comments Run the skill from an agent Load the skill into Claude Code or any MCP-compatible agent. In Claude Code, invoke it by name:
/add-educational-commentsThe agent loads the skill and runs it, confirming it installed and loaded correctly end to end.
Uninstall the skill To remove a skill from your machine, pass its name to the uninstall subcommand. Use the skill’s install name, which describe reports as the Install Name field — for this skill, chainguard-github-add-educational-comments:
chainctl skills uninstall chainguard-github-add-educational-commentsThe command prompts for confirmation before removing any files:
This will remove skill "chainguard-github-add-educational-comments" from local agent directories. Proceed? Do you want to continue? [y,N]: Uninstalled skill "chainguard-github-add-educational-comments".By default, uninstall removes the skill from every agent directory where it’s installed. Use the --agent flag to remove it from specific agents only, or the --global flag to remove it from global directories instead of the current project. Add the -y flag to skip the confirmation prompt.
Command reference Action Command List skills chainctl skills list --group chainguard --recursive Describe a skill chainctl skills describe skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/<owner>/<name>:<tag> Pull a skill chainctl skills pull skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/<owner>/<name>:<tag> <dir> Install a skill chainctl skills install skills.cgr.dev/chainguard/<owner>/<name>:<tag> Uninstall a skill chainctl skills uninstall <install-name> Next steps To publish, install, and run skills scoped to your own organization, see Getting started with the Chainguard Skills Registry.