GH-SKILL-UPDATE(1)

💖 GH-SKILL-UPDATE(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the GitHub CLI manual page for gh-skill-update — it's giving "update your installed skills to their latest versions" energy, and yes, it's a preview 👀✨.

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🎀 NAME 🎀

gh-skill-update — update installed skills to their latest versions (preview). That's the whole vibe. We're updating skills, not starting drama 💅.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

gh skill update [<skill>...] [flags]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So here's the tea, bestie: this command checks your installed skills for available updates by comparing the local tree SHA (from SKILL.md frontmatter) against the remote repository. Very "let me just verify real quick" of it 🔍.

It automatically scans all known agent host directories — including Copilot, Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Antigravity, Grok, and others — in both project and user scope. No cap, it just does that for you 🫶.

• No arguments? It checks all installed skills.
• With skill names? It checks only those specific skills, because we love a targeted queen 🎯.

Pinned skills (installed with --pin) are skipped with a notice. Want them back in the rotation? Use --unpin to clear the pinned version and include those skills in the update 🔓.

Skills without GitHub metadata (e.g. installed manually or by another tool) are prompted for their source repository in interactive mode. With --all or in non-interactive mode, they're skipped with a notice. The update re-downloads the skill with metadata injected, so future updates work automatically. Literally setting future-you up to slay ✨.

🚨 With --force, it re-downloads skills even when the remote version matches the local tree SHA. This overwrites locally modified skill files with their original content, but it does not remove extra files added locally. So yeah, it's giving "restore" but also "don't expect it to clean up your little extra files" 😭.

In interactive mode, it shows which skills have updates and asks for confirmation before proceeding. With --all, it updates without prompting. With --dry-run, it reports available updates without modifying any files. Read-only realness 👑.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --all — update all skills without prompting; no questions, just vibes.
• --dir <string> — scan a custom directory for installed skills.
• --dry-run — report available updates without modifying files.
• --force — re-download even if already up to date.
• --unpin — clear pinned version and include pinned skills in update.

🚦 EXIT CODES 🚦

• 0 — successful execution 🎉
• 1 — error 😭
• 2 — command canceled 🙈
• 4 — authentication required 🔐

NOTE: Specific commands may have additional exit codes. Refer to the command's help for more information.

🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

Here's the group chat in action — copy-paste bestie:

# Check and update all skills interactively
$ gh skill update

# Update specific skills
$ gh skill update mcp-cli git-commit

# Update all without prompting
$ gh skill update --all

# Re-download all skills (restore locally modified files)
$ gh skill update --force --all

# Check for updates without applying (read-only)
$ gh skill update --dry-run

# Unpin skills and update them to latest
$ gh skill update --unpin

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

• gh-skill(1) — go peek at the main skill command too 💜

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💖 that's the whole page, bestie — brought to you by GitHub CLI v2.102.0, Oct 2026, and the GH-SKILL-UPDATE(1) manual page. mwah 💋✨