Keep Installed AI Skills Up to Date
Package managers normally tell you when an installed package is out of date and let you refresh
just that one. Installed AI skills did not work that way: atmos ai skill install copies a
bundled skill's content once, and upgrading the atmos binary afterward never touches that
already-installed copy, even when the new release ships updated skill content.
The Problem
Official Atmos skills (atmos-terraform, atmos-stacks, and the rest of the catalog) are
embedded directly in the atmos binary. Installing one by name copies its SKILL.md and
supporting files to ~/.atmos/skills/ at that point in time. If a later atmos release bundles
an improved version of that skill, nothing tells you, and nothing refreshes your local copy — the
only way to pick it up was atmos ai skill install <name> --force, applied on faith, one skill at
a time, with no way to check first whether anything had actually changed.
atmos ai skill list --detailed already surfaced an "update available" hint when an installed
skill's version drifted from the catalog. There was no command that acted on it.
The Fix
atmos ai skill update closes that gap. It compares each installed bundled skill's recorded
version against the catalog embedded in the running binary and reinstalls only the ones that are
actually outdated — skills already at the current version are left untouched.
Run it with no arguments to refresh every installed bundled skill that has an update available (a
single confirmation, not one per skill), or name one skill to update just that one. Skills that
are already current report "already up to date" and nothing is rewritten, so it's safe to run
atmos ai skill update repeatedly, including as a habit after every atmos upgrade.
An outdated skill is reinstalled the same way atmos ai skill install <name> --force would
install it, so --client, --scope, --global, --all-clients, and --path all work exactly as
they do on install.
Skills installed from a GitHub repository aren't covered yet — there's no cheap way to check
whether a git-sourced skill's upstream has moved without re-fetching it. Run
atmos ai skill install <source> --force to refresh one of those manually.
How to Use It
# Update a single bundled skill if a newer version is available.
atmos ai skill update atmos-terraform
# Update every installed bundled skill that has an update available.
atmos ai skill update
# Skip the confirmation prompt (for automation).
atmos ai skill update --yes
# Update and redistribute to a specific AI client.
atmos ai skill update atmos-terraform --client vscode
Get Involved
Read the atmos ai skill documentation for the full command reference.
To share feedback or request an improvement, open an issue.
