Skills

Extract reusable workflows from your session history and sync them into your agent's skills directory. Turn proven patterns into repeatable commands your agent can invoke across projects.

Prerequisites

tapes CLI For generating and managing skills

SQLite Database For stored conversation sessions

Vector Storage (optional) For semantic search when using --search flag

Subcommands

tapes skill generate Extract a skill from a session transcript via LLM

tapes skill list Show all generated skills

tapes skill sync Copy a skill into your agent's skills directory

Generating Skills

Generate from a conversation hash

Pass a session hash directly to generate a skill from that conversation:

tapes skill generate abc123 --name debug-react-hooks

Generate from current checkout

If you already have a session checked out, omit the hash:

tapes checkout abc123
tapes skill generate --name debug-react-hooks

This uses the currently checked-out session. See the History guide for checkout details.

Generate from a semantic search

Find sessions by meaning and generate inline with the --search flag:

tapes skill generate --search "gum glow charm" --name charm-cli-patterns --since 2026-02-16

Requires vector storage. See the Search guide for setup.

Pipe search results into generate

Use tapes search --quiet for pipeable hash output:

tapes skill generate $(tapes search "charm CLI" -q -k 2) --name charm-cli-patterns

The -q flag outputs only hashes. -k 2 limits results to the top 2 matches.

Date Filtering

Narrow conversation turns by date range with --since and --until:

tapes skill generate abc123 --name morning-work \
  --since 2026-02-17 \
  --until 2026-02-17T17:00:00Z

--since Include turns from this date forward

--until Include turns up to this date

Preview Mode

Preview the generated skill without saving it:

tapes skill generate abc123 --name test-skill --preview

Useful for verifying the extracted patterns before committing to a skill file.

Listing Skills

View all generated skills:

tapes skill list

Syncing Skills

Copy a generated skill into your agent's skills directory:

# Agent-agnostic (default: .agents/skills/)
tapes skill sync charm-cli-patterns

# Claude Code (.claude/skills/)
tapes skill sync charm-cli-patterns --global

# Preview without writing
tapes skill sync charm-cli-patterns --local --dry-run

--global Sync to the global skills directory

--local Sync to the project-local skills directory

--dry-run Preview the sync target without writing files

Next Steps

See the CLI reference for the complete list of flags. For setting up semantic search used by --search, see the Search guide.