# Agent skills

> The `insta` skill and project-level stack skills.

A skill is a set of instructions a coding agent loads when a task matches it. The `insta` skill teaches terminal agents the platform workflow, so an agent that has it runs the right commands instead of guessing.

## The insta skill

What it teaches:

- Check `insta status` before assuming login or project state
- Work on a branch, not on `main` — create, switch, refresh secrets
- Reach credentials through the seam (`insta secrets`, `insta run`, `insta postgres url`, bindings) instead of asking for them
- Deploy with `insta deploy` and verify with `insta compute logs` / `insta compute metrics`

## Installing

```bash
npx insta@latest agent setup
```

Setup installs the skill user-globally into every agent directory the skills tool knows — Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Factory Droid, Goose, Aider, Continue, Roo, Kilo Code, Qwen, and the universal `.agents` directory among them.

## Project-level skills

`insta project create` and `insta project link` also install skills into the repo's agent directories (`.claude/skills/`, `.agents/skills/`), so any agent working in that checkout picks them up: the `insta` skill plus a fixed set of stack skills for the platform's storage and auth integrations (installed regardless of which services the project runs). These directories are gitignored — they don't travel with a clone. On a teammate or CI machine, run `insta project link <id>` (or `insta agent setup`) once to install them there.

## Updating

Rerun setup:

```bash
insta agent setup
```

Skills reinstall from the current published set each time; there is nothing to version-pin locally.