Let install skills with github cli

[desk7]

Use Case

Github CLI lets you install skills from online repos. I managed to install some of them from the repo https://github.com/matlab/skills. However, I could not install skills from this repo. I think the cause is the containing folder, named skills-catalog instead of the patterns expected by the cli.

 gh skill install https://github.com/matlab/matlab-agentic-toolkit skills-catalog/matlab-core
Using ref 2026.05.06 (8a2d96a9)
no skills found in matlab/matlab-agentic-toolkit
  Expected skills in skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/{scope}/*/SKILL.md,
  {prefix}/skills/*/SKILL.md, {prefix}/skills/{scope}/*/SKILL.md,
  */SKILL.md, or plugins/*/skills/*/SKILL.md

gh skill install https://github.com/matlab/matlab-agentic-toolkit skills-catalog/matlab-core/matlab-debugging
Using ref 2026.05.06 (8a2d96a9)
no skills found in matlab/matlab-agentic-toolkit
  Expected skills in skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/{scope}/*/SKILL.md,
  {prefix}/skills/*/SKILL.md, {prefix}/skills/{scope}/*/SKILL.md,
  */SKILL.md, or plugins/*/skills/*/SKILL.md
  This repository may be a curated list rather than a skills publisher

PS: As side question, what is the difference between the skills in this repo and those ones in https://github.com/matlab/skills?

Relevant Skill or MCP Tool

No response

Proposed Behavior

I would like to be able to install skills from this repo directly from github CLI.

Current Workaround

No response

Additional Context

No response

[michellehirsch]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to suggest we don't take any action now, but if gh skill gets more traction (and more mature) we can reconsider.

The challenge is managing this tension:

• gh skill expects a folder called skills with a flat list of skills beneath it
• We have an extra layer of hierarchy in the skills catalog, so that it's easy for humans and agents to add logical collections of skills. Each folder is a plugin (for Claude; others in the future if plugins are standardized), so you can (for instance) add skills for signal processing, but not for RF and mixed signal. With the very broad scope of MathWorks capabilities, we expect something like this will be essential for managing scaling of skills.

One idea would be to generate a skills folder with a flat list of skills that are all symbolic links to the ones in the toolkit. But that would put you in the world of either installing everything or picking and choosing individual skills. Another challenge is that we'd like for all skills to assume they have access to the skills in the matlab-core plugin, since these cover good fundamental practices.

To your side question: these skills supersede those in https://github.com/matlab/skills. The ones in the MATLAB Agentic Toolkit that appear similar are updated versions of thee ones in /matlab/skills. We are discussing what to do with that collection (I'm inclined to remove it). We are funneling new skill development and release through the MATLAB and Simulink Agentic Toolkits.

[desk7]

Thank you for the answer and for considering the suggestion.

[desk7]

I have just seen this issue on github cli repo, which seems to relate to the same problem cli/cli#13372. I cross-posted the problem there as well.