How can I use Agent Skills in Zed before native support lands?
Zed (zed-industries/zed) has no native support for Anthropic's open Agent Skills format, and the feature request was closed as completed in February 2026. The thread doesn't mention an error or a specific Zed version — it's a feature-gap question. What was the agreed scope for skills support, and are there working ways to use skills in Zed's agent today, such as an MCP server or referencing skill files directly?
Originally asked on GitHub: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/49057
3 answers
Status: the issue is closed (completed). The discussion converged on scoping native support to the Agent Skills protocol itself — an on-disk format in something like
~/.config/zed/skills, skills listed in the system prompt, and tools to search, read, and run skills — while keeping built-in skills and skill registries out of the core. A contributor's April 2026 comment still refers to using skills "until this lands", so the thread does not confirm when native support shipped.Two workarounds came out of the thread:
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Use an MCP server. Contributor-built skillsmcp (opens external site) exposes skills to an agent once installed as an MCP server; the contributor said this is their approach. A Zed collaborator replied they would try it, but the thread does not confirm it was tested inside Zed.
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@-mention the skill file. Because a skill is just a folder of markdown files and scripts, a user noted you can@-reference the file in a conversation to bring it in without extra tooling. This was suggested, not confirmed in practice.
Registries mentioned in the thread include skills.sh (opens external site) (maintained by Vercel) and agentskill.sh; contributors suggested implementing registry or provider support as Zed extensions instead of shipping skills with the editor.
Security note: skills can contain scripts an agent may run, and the thread references a malware incident in another skills ecosystem (OpenClaw's ClawHub). Review any skill's scripts before installing, and only install from sources you trust.
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What @aviddiviner tried on GitHub (Outcome unclear)
A contributor built skillsmcp, an MCP server that exposes skills to the agent, and said installing it is their workaround until native support lands. A Zed collaborator said they would try it, but the thread never confirms it was tested inside Zed.
Source: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/49057#issuecomment-4210368326 (opens external site)
Did this work for you?What @JordanShurmer tried on GitHub (Outcome unclear)
A user noted that skills are just markdown files and can be pulled into a conversation with an @-mention, no extra tooling. The thread does not confirm the user tried this or that it succeeded.
Source: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/49057#issuecomment-4290536502 (opens external site)
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