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Where Cursor skills are stored: every location it reads
There are five folders Cursor pulls skills from, not one. Two are Cursor's own; three are borrowed from the shared agent-skills ecosystem — and that third group is the one most people miss, because it lets one folder serve Cursor, Claude Code and Codex at the same time.
The two native locations
| Scope | Path (macOS / Linux) | Path (Windows) |
|---|---|---|
| Project | <repo>/.cursor/skills/ | <repo>\.cursor\skills\ |
| Global (personal) | ~/.cursor/skills/ | %USERPROFILE%\.cursor\skills\ |
Inside either folder, each skill is its own directory containing SKILL.md — e.g. .cursor/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md. Project skills are the ones you commit and share with a team; global skills follow you across every project on that machine.
The three borrowed locations
Cursor also discovers skills in .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/ and .codex/skills/ inside a project. This is not a hack — the SKILL.md format is shared across tools, and Cursor reads the other tools' folders so teams aren't forced to triplicate everything.
Our recommendation: if your team mixes editors and agents, standardise on .agents/skills/ in the repo. One copy of each skill, picked up by everyone. Keep Cursor-only experiments in .cursor/skills/ until they earn a place in the shared folder.
Which scope should a skill live in?
- Project — anything tied to this codebase: its design system, its migration playbook, its release process. Committed, reviewed, versioned with the code.
- Global — your personal toolbox: the PDF skill, a writing style, your own testing habits. Follows you, never pollutes a repo.
- Shared (.agents) — team-wide skills when the team uses more than one agent tool.
A wrong-scope skill is not an error, just friction: global skills can't be reviewed in a PR, and project skills vanish the day you switch repos. Pick by audience, not by convenience.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Cursor skills stored on Windows?
Same layout, different home folder: global skills live in %USERPROFILE%\.cursor\skills\. Project skills are identical on every OS: .cursor\skills\ inside the repository.
Can I keep skills in a shared team repo instead?
Yes. Cursor also discovers .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/ and .codex/skills/. Teams often keep one shared .agents/skills/ folder in the repo so the same skills serve Cursor, Claude Code and Codex users at once.
I put a skill in the folder but Cursor ignores it. Why?
Almost always one of three things: the folder name does not match the name field in SKILL.md, the SKILL.md is nested one level too deep (an unzip artefact), or the chat session predates the install — open a new chat. Our install guide lists the checks in order.
Next: install a skill step by step, or the full Cursor skills guide.