Global Skills

spm's scope-aware commands (init, add, remove, update, install, list, status, clean) default to project scope: they read/write the ai.json and ai.lock in the current directory and materialize skills into a project-local location. Pass -g / --global to instead manage a user-global set of skills — available to your AI tools in every project on your machine, with no ai.json to add to each repo. (spm target add, spm prune, and spm scan aren't scope-aware: prune always wipes the shared global fetch cache and scan always operates on a path.)

spm init -g --target copilot                        # create the global manifest ($SPM_HOME/ai.json)
spm add  -g https://github.com/org/skills --tag v1.0.0 --name reviewer
spm list -g                                          # list global skills
spm status -g                                        # check they're materialized
spm remove -g reviewer                               # drop a global skill
spm clean  -g                                        # remove global vendor config

Reach for global scope for skills you want everywhere regardless of project — e.g. a personal code-review checklist or a house style guide — instead of re-declaring the same skill in every repo's ai.json.

Where the global manifest lives

The global manifest + lock live under $SPM_HOME (default ~/.spm/ai.json and ~/.spm/ai.lock), separate from any project's files. Commit/sync them with your dotfiles for a reproducible personal setup across machines. They reuse the same fetch cache as project installs, so a skill already pulled for a project isn't re-cloned for global use (and vice versa).

Where global skills materialize

Global skills land in each vendor's own user-scope directory instead of a project-local one:

Target	Global directory
Copilot	~/.copilot/skills/<name>/
Gemini	~/.gemini/skills/<name>/
Codex	~/.agents/skills/<name>/
Cursor	~/.cursor/skills/<name>/
Cline	~/.cline/skills/<name>/
Windsurf	~/.codeium/windsurf/skills/<name>/
Amp	~/.config/agents/skills/<name>/
Claude	$SPM_HOME/claude-global/ (marketplace)

For every shared-dir target (Copilot, Gemini, Codex, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, Amp) that global directory is also where you might keep hand-authored skills, so spm never wipes it at global scope — it only adds/removes the entries it manages. (Note this differs from Copilot's project scope, where .agents/skills/spm-managed-skills/ is entirely spm-owned and gets wiped and rebuilt on every materialize; the other targets' project directories are likewise shared and non-destructively managed.) See Targets & Vendors for the full per-vendor detail.

Claude is the one exception: global skills materialize into a self-contained marketplace under $SPM_HOME/claude-global/, registered in ~/.claude/settings.json under a distinct marketplace name, spm-global (skills are invoked as /spm-global:<name>, vs. /spm:<name> for a project install). The distinct name keeps it from colliding with any project's own spm marketplace.

Name collisions across scopes

A shared-dir target (Copilot, Gemini, Codex, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, Amp) installed with the same skill name in both scopes collides at discovery time — the project and global copies land in the same kind of directory, so one shadows the other. Claude doesn't have this problem: /spm:foo (project) and /spm-global:foo (global) are distinct, namespaced commands. Either way, run spm status (or spm status -g) — it warns on a same-name skill across scopes even when the two installs target different vendors, since it compares the names recorded in each scope's ai.lock.

Full command reference

-g works the same way on every scope-aware command (init, add, remove, update, install, list, status, clean); see Scope: project (default) vs. global for the complete flag-by-flag reference.