# Getting started with the Chainguard Agent Skills public registry

URL: https://deploy-preview-3595--ornate-narwhal-088216.netlify.app/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/public. 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 source in the registry. Public skills are namespaced by their upstream source (public/<host>/<owner>/<repo>/<name>), so the recursive listing shows each skill’s full path:
chainctl auth login chainctl skills list --group public --recursive NAME | LATEST TAG | UPDATED ---------------------------------------------------------|------------|------------ github.com/github/awesome-copilot/agent-supply-chain | latest | 5 days ago github.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine | latest | 5 days ago github.com/github/awesome-copilot/mcp-security-audit | latest | 5 days ago . . .The public registry is large, so a full --recursive listing can take a while to return. To browse a single source, scope the --group to its path instead:
chainctl skills list --group public/github.com/github/awesome-copilot TYPE | NAME | LATEST TAG | UPDATED -------|-------------------------|------------|------------ skill | acreadiness-policy | latest | 5 days ago skill | agent-supply-chain | latest | 5 days ago skill | chrome-devtools | latest | 5 days ago skill | codeql | latest | 5 days ago skill | game-engine | latest | 5 days ago skill | mcp-security-audit | latest | 5 days ago skill | multi-stage-dockerfile | latest | 5 days ago skill | postgresql-optimization | latest | 5 days 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/public/github.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine:latest FIELD | VALUE -----------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Display Name | game-engine Reference | public/github.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine Install Name | public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engine OCI URL | skills.cgr.dev/public/github.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine:latest Description | Expert skill for building web-based game engines and games using HTML5, Canvas, WebGL, and ... License | MIT Upstream | github.com/github/awesome-copilot/skills/game-engine Upstream Commit | cf4347e88c2e40a9aabe5801748ec6bf924c09be License Source | LICENSE Tag | cf4347e88c2e40a9aabe5801748ec6bf924c09be Digest | sha256:c8a079466ef2eb8de03847f0a96efe0b5131c628d9164bf7edb887bdd5ed668d Size | 1.2 KB Published | 6 days 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/public/github.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine:latest ./game-engineSkill written to: /home/linky/game-engineEvery hardened skill ships with a HARDENING.md that records the upstream source, the exact commit Chainguard hardened from, and the outcome of each hardening run:
cat game-engine/HARDENING.md# Hardening report - skill: `github.com/github/awesome-copilot/skills/game-engine` - sha: `cf4347e88c2e40a9aabe5801748ec6bf924c09be` - harden run: 1 (outcome: completed) - SKILL.md modified: true Hardened by the multi-model harden pipeline. The per-model fix plans, cross-model critiques, and the reconciled synthesis are recorded under `notes/harden/run_1/`. The corrected SKILL.md is this version's hardened overlay.The report pins the exact upstream sha Chainguard hardened from, the outcome of the run, and whether the hardened overlay changed the skill’s SKILL.md. Skills are hardened by a multi-model pipeline whose per-model fix plans and reconciled synthesis are recorded for the run, so you can trace exactly what was inspected and changed.
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/public/github.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine: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.com/github/awesome-copilot/game-engine AGENT | LOCATION | MODE -------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Claude Code | .claude/skills/public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engine | symlink → ../../.agents/skills/public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engine Run the skill from an agent Load the skill into Claude Code or any MCP-compatible agent. In Claude Code, invoke it by name:
/game-engineThe 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, public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engine:
chainctl skills uninstall public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engineThe command prompts for confirmation before removing any files:
This will remove skill "public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engine" from local agent directories. Proceed? Do you want to continue? [y,N]: Uninstalled skill "public-github.com-github-awesome-copilot-game-engine".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 public --recursive Describe a skill chainctl skills describe skills.cgr.dev/public/<host>/<owner>/<repo>/<name>:<tag> Pull a skill chainctl skills pull skills.cgr.dev/public/<host>/<owner>/<repo>/<name>:<tag> <dir> Install a skill chainctl skills install skills.cgr.dev/public/<host>/<owner>/<repo>/<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.