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Install Adaptive Skills via APM

Reference documentation for Install Adaptive Skills via APM in Adaptive Skills.

This guide covers installing the Adaptive Skills capability library through the APM package manager. Adaptive Skills ships as a flat APM Skill Collection — skills/<name>/SKILL.md — conformant with the agentskills.io specification. Each skill installs as an independent unit; you can install the whole library or pick individual skills.

Prerequisites

  • APM CLI installed. See APM installation.
  • A consumer project (any directory; APM operates on the current working directory).
  • A target harness that consumes <project>/skills/ — Claude Code is the reference target (target: claude in apm.yml). Other agentskills.io-conformant harnesses should work without changes, since Adaptive Skills emits the spec-conformant Skill Collection layout.

Target paths

APM target Installed skill path
claude .claude/skills/
codex .agents/skills/
copilot .agents/skills/

Codex and GitHub Copilot use the shared .agents/skills/ convention. APM does not create a .github/skills/ directory for the copilot target.

Install the full library

apm install nevitonsantana/adaptive-skills

This resolves the package from GitHub, writes a lockfile, and promotes each skills/<name>/ directory into your project’s target skill location (for Claude, .claude/skills/<name>/).

After install, list what landed:

ls .claude/skills/
# api-design  architecture-review  business-design  checkpoint-review
# code-style  communication  debugging  design-system-intelligence
# domain-language-alignment  feature-complexity-audit  feature-planning
# feature-value-governance  handoff-summary  heuristic-audit
# intent-clarification  knowledge-conflict-resolution
# knowledge-source-evaluation  lean-implementation  observability-review
# opportunity-tree-alignment  premortem  qa-review  refactoring
# restricted-context-check  revenue-lever-mapping  sunset-decision
# task-chunking  testing  triad-check  ux-provocation  ux-strategy
# ux-writing  workflow

38 portable skills, one per directory, each with a SKILL.md entrypoint.

Install a single skill

APM’s Skill Collection layout supports per-skill selection. Use the --skill flag:

apm install nevitonsantana/adaptive-skills --skill debugging

You can repeat the flag to pick multiple skills:

apm install nevitonsantana/adaptive-skills --skill debugging --skill premortem --skill triad-check

The selection is persisted in your project’s apm.yml and lockfile, so subsequent apm install runs (in CI or on teammates’ machines) reproduce the same skill subset.

What ships and what does not

In the APM payload Not in the APM payload
skills/** (all 38 portable skills) domain-packs/ (see below)
apm.yml evolution/ (meta-process, not capability)
docs/skill-categories.md projections/, capabilities/, templates/, examples/
docs/guides/install-via-apm.md docs/concepts/, docs/_meta/, internal docs
docs/adr/ADR-004 + ADR-005 Engine/evolution scripts (scripts/validate_evolution.py, etc.)
LICENSE, README.md

The payload is the capability surface a consumer executes, not the governance and evolution machinery the library uses to maintain itself.

Domain packs (crisis-management)

domain-packs/crisis-management/ is the first validation case for the domain-pack pattern. It is deliberately excluded from the main APM package for v0.1.2 — domain packs are case studies, not canonical capability surface (see ADR-002 — Domain agnosticism and Épico 2 of the cross-repo plan).

If you want the crisis-management skills today, consume them via git clone:

git clone https://github.com/nevitonsantana/adaptive-skills.git
cp -R adaptive-skills/domain-packs/crisis-management/skills/* <your-project>/.claude/skills/

A future release may promote crisis-management to a separate APM package (apm install nevitonsantana/adaptive-skills-crisis-pack) if soft-launch demand justifies it.

Verify the install

After apm install, you can validate the installed skills against the agentskills.io spec using the same reference validator the library’s CI uses:

pip install 'skills-ref==0.1.0'
skills-ref validate .claude/skills/

All 38 skills should report conformant.

Disposable smoke tests with APM 0.26.0 and the immutable v0.1.2 tag confirmed installation for claude, codex, and copilot, with all 38 skills materialized and apm compile --validate passing in each consumer. The package manifest contains maintainer convenience scripts, but APM generated scripts: {} in the consumer projects and did not expose them through apm run; use the validation commands above instead of assuming those scripts are available after installation.

Two-step caveat (vs. AletheIA)

If you have used AletheIA’s APM install, you know it requires a second step (apm run scaffold-overlay) because AletheIA is a project scaffold, not a capability primitive. Adaptive Skills does not need that second step. Skills are exactly the kind of primitive APM is built to deliver — apm install materializes them directly. There is no apm run install-skills equivalent and none is needed.

Troubleshooting

  • apm: command not found — APM CLI is not on your PATH. See APM installation.
  • No .claude/skills/ after install — your harness target may not be claude. Inspect your project’s apm.yml for the target: value and consult the APM target reference.
  • skills-ref validate fails on a skill — open an issue at adaptive-skills/issues with the skill name and the validator output. Library CI runs skills-ref validate against every PR, so this should never happen on main; if it does, it is a release regression.

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