Project vs Global Skills

Kenji installs skills to one of two locations depending on whether you pass the --global flag. Both locations use the same two-level <repo-slug>/<skill-slug>/ folder structure.

Project skills

Installed into the current working directory. Scoped to that project only.

./.kenji/skills/<repo-slug>/<skill-slug>/

Use this for skills that are specific to a single codebase — architecture rules, testing conventions, framework-specific prompts.

Global skills

Installed into your user home directory. Available across all projects via kenji use.

~/.kenji/skills/<repo-slug>/<skill-slug>/

Use this for skills you reuse frequently across multiple projects. Install once globally, then copy into any project without re-downloading.

Copying global skills into a project

The kenji use command copies a skill from your global store into the current project, preserving the <repo-slug>/<skill-slug>/ structure:

$ kenji use mcp-builder

This copies ~/.kenji/skills/anthropics-skills/mcp-builder/ into .kenji/skills/anthropics-skills/mcp-builder/ and updates the scope field in kenji.json to local.