Adding Skills to Cursor

This guide walks you through the process of adding skills to Cursor so your AI agent can leverage deep Salesforce expertise while you work.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Cursor installed and running
• Node.js 18+ installed (check with node -v)
• A basic understanding of what skills are

How Cursor Discovers Skills

Cursor discovers skills from two locations:

.cursor/skills/                # Project-level (version-controlled with your repo)
|-- team-apex-standards/
|   +-- SKILL.md
+-- ...

~/.cursor/skills/              # User-level (applies across all projects)
|-- sf-apex/
|   +-- SKILL.md
+-- ...

• Project-level (.cursor/skills/): lives inside your repository, version-controlled, and shared with your team automatically.
• User-level (~/.cursor/skills/): personal skills that apply across all your projects.

When you send a message, the agent reads the description field from each discovered skill's frontmatter and decides which ones are relevant to your request. You can also invoke a skill manually using the / slash command menu in chat.

To see all your installed skills, open Cursor Settings (Cmd+Shift+J on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows) and navigate to Rules. Your skills appear in the Agent Decides section.

Installation Methods

There are two ways to add skills to Cursor:

npx skills add <github-user>/<repo-name>

npx skills add Jaganpro/sf-skills

npx skills add Jaganpro/sf-skills --skill sf-apex

npx skills add Jaganpro/sf-skills --list

mkdir -p ~/.cursor/skills

mkdir -p .cursor/skills

mkdir -p ~/.cursor/skills/my-custom-skill

---
name: my-custom-skill
description: Custom Apex development guidelines for my team. Use when writing, reviewing, or fixing Apex classes, triggers, and test classes.
---

# My Custom Apex Skill

## Rules
- Always use the Trigger Actions Framework for triggers
- Bulkify all operations; never use SOQL or DML inside loops
- Minimum 85% code coverage for all classes
- Use custom metadata types instead of hardcoded values

## Naming Conventions
- Trigger handlers: `{Object}TriggerHandler.cls`
- Service classes: `{Object}Service.cls`
- Test classes: `{Object}Test.cls`

Keeping Skills Up to Date

Skills are actively maintained by the community. To check for and apply updates:

npx skills check
npx skills update

Creating Your Own Skills

You can create custom skills for your team's specific patterns and conventions. A well-written skill includes:

1. A clear description: specific enough that the agent knows exactly when to use it
2. Actionable rules: specific, testable guidelines (not vague advice)
3. Scoring rubrics: optional but powerful; give the AI a way to self-evaluate its output
4. Examples: show what good output looks like

Here's a more complete example for a team-specific Apex skill:

---
name: acme-apex
description: ACME Corp Apex development standards. Use when writing, reviewing, or debugging Apex classes, triggers, batch jobs, and test classes in this project.
---

# ACME Corp Apex Standards

## Trigger Framework
- Use Trigger Actions Framework (TAF) for all triggers
- One trigger per object, no logic in the trigger file
- Handler methods must be bulkified

## Error Handling
- Use custom exception classes: `AcmeException`, `AcmeValidationException`
- Log errors to `Error_Log__c` custom object
- Never swallow exceptions silently

## Testing Requirements
- Minimum 90% code coverage
- Test positive, negative, and bulk scenarios (200+ records)
- Use TestDataFactory for all test data creation
- Assert specific field values, not just record counts

## Scoring (50 points)
- Architecture (15): Proper separation of concerns, no logic in triggers
- Bulkification (10): Collections used, no SOQL/DML in loops
- Error Handling (10): Custom exceptions, proper logging
- Testing (10): Coverage, bulk tests, meaningful assertions
- Naming (5): Follows ACME naming conventions

Combining Skills with Rules

Skills and rules work together but serve different purposes:

• Skills are for dynamic, procedural "how-to" knowledge. The agent loads them when they're relevant to the current task.
• Rules (.cursorrules or .cursor/rules/) are always-on, declarative conventions that apply to every conversation.

A common pattern:

# .cursorrules
When working in this project:
- This is a Sales Cloud implementation for ACME Corp
- Default org alias: acme-dev
- Always use the Salesforce MCP for org operations
- Follow the permission set model (no profiles)
- All custom objects use the ACME__ namespace prefix

The AI combines both sources of context. The skill tells it how to write good Apex, and the rules tell it where to deploy and what conventions this specific project follows.

Troubleshooting

Next Steps

Ready to install a production-grade Salesforce skill library? Head over to the next guide:

• Using Jag's SF Skills: install 33 Salesforce skills covering Apex, Flow, LWC, SOQL, Agentforce, Data 360, and more