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Skills installer

Install Tech Professor agent skills into Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex, so planning happens where you write the plan, then real gaps become tours and quizzes.

What it installs

The @techprofessor/skills package is an interactive wizard that writes Agent Skills (SKILL.md) into your coding agent’s user skills folder. You do not need access to the Tech Professor git repo. Skills that push artifacts need the MCP server connected with a personal API token.

  • tp-plan-discuss: challenge a plan before Build; on an explicit “learn more”, author a tour or quiz and push it via MCP.
  • tp-plan-quiz: quiz you in-agent on the plan; optionally persist a quiz artifact.
  • tp-retrospective: after a coding session or PR, surface dive-in opportunities and offer Tech Professor artifacts.

Install

One command, no clone, no build:

cd ~ && npx -y @techprofessor/skills

The same command is shown in the app under Settings → Developer & MCP (Install agent skills). Starting in ~ avoids npm EOVERRIDE failures inside projects with conflicting overrides.

Or with Bun:

bunx @techprofessor/skills

Supported agents

The wizard’s first step is an agent picker. Skills use the shared SKILL.md format; only the install path differs:

  • Cursor: ~/.cursor/skills/
  • Claude Code: ~/.claude/skills/
  • Codex: ~/.codex/skills/

Choose one, several, or all. Non-interactive installs default to all three:

npx -y @techprofessor/skills --yes
npx -y @techprofessor/skills --agent cursor
npx -y @techprofessor/skills --agent claude,codex
npx -y @techprofessor/skills --agent all --force

If npx fails with EOVERRIDE

npx reads the package.json of the directory you are in. If that project has npm overrides that conflict with a direct dependency (a common jsdom pattern), install fails before the skills package runs; the skills package itself has no dependencies. Use cd ~ && … or bunx as above.

Flags

  • --yes / -y: non-interactive: all skills, all agents (unless --agent is set), defaults.
  • --force / -f: overwrite existing skill folders without prompting.
  • --agent: comma-separated cursor, claude, codex, or all.

What the wizard asks

  1. Which agent(s): Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, or all (default all).
  2. Which skills: multi-select; default is all three (tp-plan-discuss, tp-plan-quiz, tp-retrospective).
  3. Install directory: defaults to that agent’s user skills folder (shown above). Override per agent if you need a custom path.
  4. MCP reminder: prints a ready-made HTTP MCP snippet (and a claude mcp add-json line for Claude Code). Create a tp_pat_… token under Settings → Developer & MCP (full steps in the MCP server guide).
  5. Preferred model provider: optional companion preference (Anthropic, OpenAI, Cursor, or skip). Skipping uses agent defaults.
  6. Install: copies skill folders into each selected agent path and writes a small tp-skills.json companion config next to them.

If a skill is already present, the wizard asks before overwriting (or skips it under --yes unless you pass --force).

After install

  1. Confirm the MCP connection works: your client should list Tech Professor tools such as get_artifact_schema and push_artifact.
  2. Invoke a skill before you implement: e.g. tp-plan-discuss in Cursor, /tp-plan-discuss in Claude Code, or $tp-plan-discuss in Codex.
  3. When a skill pushes an artifact, it should ask for audience (technical | non-technical) and level (easy | intermediate | advanced | mixed). If you skip, defaults are technical + mixed.
Skills challenge the plan and only funnel gaps into Tech Professor on an explicit “learn more”; they do not auto-dump a course.