You give Cursor a real task and watch it work… from memory.
- Ask for a landing page → generic off-brand Tailwind hero
- Ask for Clerk auth → skips JWT verification
- “I’ll write a CSV parser” → reinvents half of papaparse (badly)
You just spent 20 minutes and 1k tokens watching it iterate on something that already has a perfect answer somewhere online.
The frustrating part isn’t that Claude is bad.
It’s that the right playbooks already exist.
- Anthropic has a 4,000-word frontend design skill (layout, typography, motion, accessibility)
- Clerk has an end-to-end auth implementation
- obra/superpowers has hundreds more
The expertise exists. The routing doesn’t.
What I built: upskill (free)
upskill = routing layer for skills
Install it once, add one line to your agent config (CLAUDE.md), and now:
Before every non-trivial task → your agent runs
upskill find "<task>"
Instead of guessing, it pulls a vetted playbook and follows it.
What changes?
Same prompt: “design a landing page”
→ Now follows Anthropic’s actual playbook
Same prompt: “add Clerk auth”
→ Full implementation, JWT verification included
Think of it as:
Mixture of experts, but at the agent layer
Your agent stops improvising and starts executing proven workflows.
Under the hood
- 10k+ indexed skills from:
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Vercel, Microsoft
- Garry Tan (gstack), obra/superpowers
- 100+ independent authors
- Search = hybrid:
- Postgres full-text search (for exact stuff like flags, APIs)
- 1024-dim vector embeddings (for semantic matching)
- Re-ranked by stars, installs, community feedback
→ Pure vectors miss specifics
→ Pure FTS misses intent
→ Hybrid works better
Auth-aware ranking (optional)
If env vars exist locally:
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID → AWS skills rank higher STRIPE_SECRET_KEY → Stripe-specific flows rank higher
Only variable names are used. Values never leave your machine.
Safety
Every skill goes through LLM adversarial review at index time:
- Prompt injection
- Credential exfiltration
- Typosquatting / lookalike domains
- Hidden malicious instructions
Out of 10k+ skills:
- Hundreds were blocked
- Found real attacks (e.g. hidden
onerror="alert('XSS')" + “skip tests”)
A few false positives (being tuned):
rm -rf node_modules in legit guides - Google Drive delete API
- Warnings about
NEXT_PUBLIC misuse
Privacy
Default = locked down
upskill find → sends only your query - Telemetry → opt-in
- Env-aware ranking → opt-in
- Skill submissions → opt-in
Everything toggleable anytime.
Not just for code
Covers workflows like:
- Slides
- Email triage
- Google Workspace
- Notion queries
- Calendar automation
- Scientific writing
- Malware analysis
- Accessibility audits
- Sales playbooks
If your agent is about to “wing it”…
there’s probably already a better playbook.
Try it
npm install -g /upskill upskill install npx -y skills add Autoloops/upskill/skill
It’ll ask a few questions and wire itself into your agent.
Repo: https://github.com/Autoloops/upskill
MIT licensed. PRs welcome.
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