The top 3 modular agent skills in every category โ ranked by community signal, real-world utility, and momentum over the last 7 days. This week the story isn't a single vendor shipping a catalog; it's the ecosystem maturing into distinct specialties: cloud vendors weaponizing MCP, media skills going viral on install charts, and a quiet explosion of integration gateways on ClawHub.
If you're new here, this is your weekly cheat sheet for what's worth installing. Every skill follows the open SKILL.md standard โ a folder with a SKILL.md (YAML frontmatter + Markdown instructions), optionally bundled with scripts/, references/, and assets/. They run across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, and 40+ other agents.
This week covers 7 categories ร 3 ranks = 21 skills. We hunted across skills.sh (1.29M+ indexed skills), the LinklyAI Best Skills cross-ecosystem Top-100, GitHub trending, LobeHub (333K+ indexed), ClawHub, and community forums. Notable: all 65 skills from the prior three weeks are inside our 30-day dedup window, so this week's leaderboard is 100% fresh โ no repeat entries, no overrides needed.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | Azure Skills Plugin | Microsoft | microsoft/azure-skills | 1.4K โญ / 239 forks | SKILL.md + MCP servers | 27 skills + 200+ MCP tools, 3-layer architecture |
| ๐ฅ | Microsoft Skills | Microsoft | microsoft/skills | Official | SKILL.md + MCP | Azure SDKs + AI Foundry, custom agents |
| ๐ฅ | Azure Functions Skills | Microsoft | azure-functions-skills | Public preview | SKILL.md | One-command serverless workspace |
๐ฅ Azure Skills Plugin (Microsoft) โ The single most complete cloud-native capability layer we've seen packaged as an agent plugin. Microsoft's azure-skills ships 27 curated skills + 200+ MCP tools across 40+ Azure services in one install, organized as three layers: skills as "the brain" (workflows, decision trees, guardrails), the Azure MCP Server as "the hands" (live resource inventory, pricing, logs, diagnostics), and Foundry MCP as "the AI specialist" (model discovery, deployment, agent workflows). On the skills.sh vendor leaderboard, Microsoft now tops every other vendor at 58 skills / 27.1M installs โ with azure-ai, azure-storage, and microsoft-foundry all landing in the cross-ecosystem Worth-Installing top 10. MIT-licensed. Install once across GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, and IntelliJ via apm install microsoft/azure-skills or /plugin install azure.
๐ฅ Microsoft Skills (microsoft/skills) โ The sibling repo to azure-skills, bundling skills, MCP servers, custom agents, and AGENTS.md templates for the broader Microsoft developer surface โ Azure SDKs and Microsoft AI Foundry. Where azure-skills is the deployment/ops play, this is the SDK-and-foundry play, teaching agents the correct way to call Azure libraries and Foundry APIs. Official, Apache/MIT-style, free.
๐ฅ Azure Functions Skills (Microsoft) โ Announced in public preview in June 2026 as "an AI-era workspace" for serverless. A one-command install gives GitHub Copilot CLI and friends a structured Azure Functions development loop โ project scaffolding, bindings, local debugging, and deployment. Narrower in scope than the top two, but the sharpest signal that Microsoft is treating skills as a first-class distribution channel, not a side project. Free.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | agent-browser | Vercel Labs | vercel-labs/agent-browser | 41.4K โญ / 2.8K forks | SKILL.md + Rust CLI | #1 Worth-Installing (80.9), 613K installs |
| ๐ฅ | browser-harness | Browser Use | browser-use/browser-use | 111K โญ repo | SKILL.md + CLI | Human-like browsing, 17K skill installs |
| ๐ฅ | BrowserAct Skills | BrowserAct | browser-act/skills | Growing | SKILL.md + CLI | Browser state discovery via get-skills |
๐ฅ agent-browser (Vercel Labs) โ This is the #1 skill in the entire cross-ecosystem ranking right now: an 80.9 Worth-Installing score and the top social-buzz slot with 100+ X posts in 7 days. The headline: a fast native Rust CLI with a Node.js fallback that gives any agent browser automation without Playwright or Puppeteer friction. Its snapshot command returns an accessibility tree with stable @e1 refs (the "frontend eyes" pattern), and it layers in genuinely agent-specific features: semantic locators (find role button click --name "Submit"), read for agent-friendly markdown/llms.txt extraction, React DevTools introspection (react tree, react renders), axe-core a11y audits, a batch command, HAR recording, an MCP server with typed tools, and opt-in security (domain allowlists, action policies, content-boundary markers, an encrypted auth vault). 646 commits, 41.4K stars. Free, MIT-style.
๐ฅ browser-harness (Browser Use) โ The skill wrapper around browser-use/browser-use, the 111K-star project that lets an agent "use a web browser the same way humans do" โ open pages, click, type, fill forms. Where agent-browser optimizes for the accessibility-tree/snapshot workflow, browser-use optimizes for natural-language instruction โ multi-step browsing with state carried between steps. 17K skill installs and a strong open-source mindshare. Free, Apache-licensed.
๐ฅ BrowserAct Skills (BrowserAct) โ A CLI-driven skill that lets an agent discover browser state first (via get-skills) before running automation commands locally. The interesting angle is the discovery-first flow: the agent interrogates what the page offers, then acts โ reducing the "guess the selector" failures that plague naive browser automation. Growing repo, free.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | Superpowers AI Media Pack | skills-101 | skills-101/superpowers | 88.2K total installs | SKILL.md + workflows | #1 trending, 391K installs on ai-video |
| ๐ฅ | HyperFrames | HeyGen | heygen-com/hyperframes | Apache 2.0 | SKILL.md + CLI | HTML-to-video, agent-native |
| ๐ฅ | GenMedia Skills | genmedia-labs | genmedia-labs/skills | 85.1K total installs | SKILL.md | video-edit, ai-music, ai-image |
๐ฅ Superpowers AI Media Pack (skills-101) โ The single hottest thing on the install charts this week. This is an extended edition of the classic obra/superpowers library, retuned specifically for AI media and growth automation โ and it's cleanly inside our dedup because it's a distinct publisher and a distinct focus from the original. Four skills dominate the 7-day trending list: ai-video-generation (391K installs), ai-image-generation (391K), ai-avatar-video (391K), and twitter-automation (391K). The value proposition is a turnkey "prompt โ publishable media asset" flywheel, with automation hooks baked in. 88.2K installs across the pack. Free to install; individual media backends may require their own API keys.
๐ฅ HyperFrames (HeyGen) โ The most technically interesting media skill this week. HeyGen open-sourced HyperFrames (Apache 2.0) as an HTML-to-video framework built for agents: the authoring format is plain HTML/CSS with a few data attributes, and a renderer turns it into seekable video with animation. The skills teach agents the full production loop โ plan the video, write valid HTML, wire animations, add media, lint, preview, render. It's being positioned as a direct Remotion challenger (Remotion is in our dedup window), with the twist that the authoring language is web-native, so any agent that can write HTML can compose video. Skills split into hyperframes-core, -animation, -audio, -creative, and -cli. Free, open-source.
๐ฅ GenMedia Skills (genmedia-labs) โ A focused media toolkit climbing the charts with video-edit (192K), ai-image-generation (192K), ai-video-generation (193K), and ai-music (192K) installs. Cleaner-scoped than the Superpowers pack โ each skill is a single job, which is exactly the "one skill, one job" discipline we preach. 85.1K total installs. Free.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | UI UX Pro Max | Next Level Builder | nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill | 121K โญ | SKILL.md + design intel | 50+ styles, 160+ palettes, 9 stacks |
| ๐ฅ | anti-ui-slop | UIZZE | uizze.com | 18.5K installs | SKILL.md | #5 trending, product-specific UI |
| ๐ฅ | shadcn/ui Skill | shadcn | ui.shadcn.com/docs/skills | Official | SKILL.md | CLI v4, registry, Tailwind v4 |
๐ฅ UI UX Pro Max (Next Level Builder) โ The design skill that refuses to die on the star chart. At 121K GitHub stars (LinklyAI Top Repos, Aug 27), it's the biggest design-intelligence skill in the ecosystem, and it sits cleanly outside our dedup window. The skill packages design intelligence as reference material: 50+ UI styles, 160+ color palettes, and 9 technology stacks (web + mobile), so an agent can commit to a coherent visual direction instead of emitting default AI-slop layouts. Open-source, free, installable as a Claude Code skill with .claude/skills/ structure plus a skill.json manifest. It's the community's answer to "how do I get my agent to stop making everything look the same."
๐ฅ anti-ui-slop (UIZZE) โ The freshest entrant in the design category โ and one of the sharpest names we've seen. It's the #5 trending skill this week (18.5K installs), and it landed as a formal submission to the tech-leads-club skills repo on Aug 16. Where UI UX Pro Max is a reference library, anti-ui-slop is a critique + correction skill: it teaches Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot to build product-specific web and iOS interfaces instead of generic, interchangeable layouts. Think "Anthropic frontend-design's anti-slop spirit, but community-maintained and iOS-aware." Free.
๐ฅ shadcn/ui Skill (official) โ The component library that owns most of the modern web UI stack now ships an official skill, teaching agents the CLI v4, the registry system, component patterns, and Tailwind v4 config. It's an Encoded Preference skill in the best sense: Claude already knows React, but this encodes the shadcn way โ which registry item to reach for, how composition works, how theming layers. For the huge cohort building on shadcn/ui, this removes a class of "close but wrong" component errors. Free, official.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | AI Research Skills | Orchestra | orchestra-research/AI-research-SKILLs | 10.4K โญ | SKILL.md ร86 | Full research lifecycle |
| ๐ฅ | ResearchPilot | (community) | Reddit/community | New (June) | SKILL.md ร9 | Academic literature workflows |
| ๐ฅ | deep-research-skill | (SkillsLLM) | skillsllm.com | Listed | SKILL.md | Evidence-first, citations, contradiction checks |
๐ฅ AI Research Skills (Orchestra) โ The most comprehensive academic research skill suite on the board: 86 production-ready skills covering the entire AI research lifecycle, from literature survey and idea generation through experiment execution, model training, evaluation, and paper writing. At 10.4K stars it's the reference implementation for "can an agent actually do research, not just summarize search results." The WELCOME.md onboarding walks agents through which skill to invoke at each stage. This is a different animal from the ByteDance deer-flow deep-research skill (in our dedup) โ where deer-flow is a general web-research harness, Orchestra is purpose-built for the scientific pipeline. Open-source, free.
๐ฅ ResearchPilot โ A community suite of 9 open-source agent skills specifically for academic literature workflows, surfaced on r/learnmachinelearning in June 2026. Its pitch: turn a research question into a structured pipeline โ search, filter, extract, synthesize, cite. Smaller than Orchestra but notable for being purpose-built around the literature-review pain point and actively discussed. Free, open-source.
๐ฅ deep-research-skill (SkillsLLM) โ An evidence-first research skill with the discipline we wish more skills copied: source tracking, inline citations, contradiction checks, and uncertainty-aware synthesis. It's the "verify every claim against a fetched source" methodology, packaged as a reusable SKILL.md. Listed on SkillsLLM (Apr 2026), free. It earns the bronze for methodology rigor even without a big star count.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | api-gateway | byungkyu | ClawHub | 15 versions | SKILL.md | #1 most-active, credential injection |
| ๐ฅ | stripe-api | byungkyu | ClawHub | 14 versions | SKILL.md | Managed Stripe calls |
| ๐ฅ | linkedin-api | byungkyu | ClawHub | 12 versions | SKILL.md | Managed OAuth LinkedIn |
๐ฅ api-gateway (byungkyu, ClawHub) โ The most frequently updated skill in the entire ecosystem right now: 15 versions, last updated 2026-08-26, topping the LinklyAI "Most Active" list. It's the integration workhorse for OpenClaw agents โ call third-party APIs through the Maton gateway, which injects credentials for apps the user has already connected, so the agent never handles raw secrets. On a platform (ClawHub) that now lists 10,000+ skills, api-gateway is the connective tissue that makes the long tail of gmail/google-sheets/stripe/linkedin skills work without each one reinventing auth. Free; requires a Maton API key and connected apps.
๐ฅ stripe-api (byungkyu, ClawHub) โ 14 versions, updated 2026-08-26. Managed Stripe operations for agents โ payments, subscriptions, invoices โ with credential injection via the same gateway pattern. It's the canonical example of "integration skills" done as a focused, single-job module. Free; requires Maton key.
๐ฅ linkedin-api (byungkyu, ClawHub) โ 12 versions, managed OAuth. Lets agents share posts, manage campaigns, and pull profile/org data. โ ๏ธ Worth flagging our security note: an industry post this year (Jason Grad) warned that these skills route through third-party gateways rather than official APIs โ a real attack-surface consideration. That's a governance caveat, not a disqualifier, but read the SKILL.md and audit the gateway before wiring these into production. Free; requires Maton key.
| Rank | Skill | Developer | Platform | Stars | Format | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐ฅ | paperless-business-system-from-files | (community) | Rising Stars | 27 days old | SKILL.md | #1 rising star (0.981) |
| ๐ฅ | anti-fraud | (community) | Rising Stars | 10 days old | SKILL.md | Fraud-detection workflow |
| ๐ฅ | reddit-automation | flowkit-labs | flowkit-labs/skills | 17.3K installs | SKILL.md | #6 trending this week |
๐ฅ paperless-business-system-from-files โ The top "Rising Star" in the LinklyAI rankings: 27 days old with a 0.981 popularity score โ essentially a perfect launch trajectory. The skill's job is right in the name: turn a pile of incoming files into a structured, paperless business system โ categorize, extract, index, and organize documents into a usable workflow. It's the kind of "boring but genuinely useful" automation that wins the Rising Stars list precisely because it solves a real, recurring chore. Free.
๐ฅ anti-fraud โ 10 days old, 0.983 popularity โ actually the highest raw popularity score among rising stars, held back only by being younger. An agent skill that encodes fraud-detection workflows โ flagging suspicious patterns in transactions, documents, or submissions. Early days, but the velocity is real and the use case is evergreen. Free.
๐ฅ reddit-automation (flowkit-labs) โ The #6 trending skill this week (17.3K installs). A social-automation skill that teaches agents to schedule posts, monitor communities, and manage engagement on Reddit programmatically. It's the same growth-automation flywheel we flagged in the Superpowers pack, but scoped to a single platform with cleaner execution. Free; may require Reddit API credentials.
Ranked by AgentSkillReview. Data sourced from skills.sh leaderboard (1.29M+ skills), the LinklyAI Best Skills cross-ecosystem Top-100 (2026-08-27 snapshot), GitHub trending, LobeHub (333K+ indexed), ClawHub, and community forums. Install counts and stars verified against live sources Aug 22โ28, 2026.
Methodology: (1) community signal โ GitHub stars, skills.sh installs, weekly growth; (2) recency โ commits in past 30 days; (3) modularity โ clean SKILL.md + optional scripts/references; (4) real-world utility; (5) innovation. All skills follow the open SKILL.md standard. 30-day dedup enforced against reviewed_skills (65 skills in window). No internal skills reviewed. No dedup overrides this week.
