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Skillmaker Studio Docs

Install

Section titled “From npm (recommended)”

skillmaker ships on npm as skillmaker-studio with prebuilt binaries for macOS arm64, macOS x64 (Intel), Linux x64, and Windows x64:

Terminal window
npm install -g skillmaker-studio
skillmaker --help

or zero-install:

Terminal window
npx skillmaker-studio --help

The right platform binary is pulled in automatically as an optional dependency. Windows support is new and lightly tested — if you hit something broken there, please open an issue.

One-command install (curl)

Section titled “One-command install (curl)”
Terminal window
curl -fsSL https://skillmaker.studio/install.sh | sh

This detects your OS/arch, downloads the matching release tarball from the latest GitHub Release (sociotechnica-org/skillmaker-studio), and installs skillmaker (plus the viewer assets it needs) to ~/.skillmaker/bin. Re-run the same command to upgrade. The curl script supports macOS arm64 and Linux x64 today — on other platforms, use the npm install above.

Installing from source

Section titled “Installing from source”

Building from a checkout works on any platform bun supports, and is the right path if you want to hack on Skillmaker Studio itself.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”

  • bun — the CLI runs directly under bun, no build step required for local use.

  • git — Skillmaker Studio’s journal is git-tracked, and every workspace it manages must be a git repo.

  • If you use asdf to manage bun, note that asdf refuses a bare bun invocation in a directory without a .tool-versions file. If bun --version fails with an asdf resolution error, set:

    Terminal window
    export ASDF_BUN_VERSION=1.3.11

    (The Skillmaker Studio repo itself carries a .tool-versions file, so this only matters when you run the CLI from outside the repo checkout — which is exactly what the next page does.)

Clone and build

Section titled “Clone and build”
Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/sociotechnica-org/skillmaker-studio.git
cd skillmaker-studio
bun install
bun run build:viewer   # required once before `skillmaker start` works

bun install also clones a research copy of the Effect source (.repos/effect) used for reference; skip it with SKIP_EFFECT_CLONE=1 if you don’t need it.

Running the CLI from the checkout

Section titled “Running the CLI from the checkout”

The CLI’s entry point is packages/cli/src/main.ts, and bun runs TypeScript directly — no compile step:

Terminal window
bun packages/cli/src/main.ts --help

That’s the exact invocation this guide uses everywhere below. In a real shell it’s worth a short alias so the rest of this guide (and the CLI Reference) reads naturally as skillmaker <command>:

Terminal window
alias skillmaker="bun /path/to/skillmaker-studio/packages/cli/src/main.ts"

Optional: compile a single binary

Section titled “Optional: compile a single binary”

Skillmaker Studio can also compile to one self-contained executable (no bun, no repo checkout, no node_modules needed on the target machine — bun build --compile embeds the runtime):

Terminal window
bun run build:dist
# produces dist/skillmaker (the binary) and dist/viewer-dist/ (must stay
# siblings — see docs/dist.md in the repo for the full artifact story)

Copy both to somewhere on PATH and skillmaker works exactly like the bun packages/cli/src/main.ts invocation above, from any directory.

Next: make your first skill

Section titled “Next: make your first skill”

Continue to Your first skill — the guided tour from skillmaker start through research, design, drafting, and evals, with an agent doing the production work.