Agent skills

Agent skills are task-specific instruction files that AI coding assistants load to perform Databricks development tasks. The Databricks skills live in databricks/databricks-agent-skills and follow the open agent skills standard.

Skills tell your coding agent how Databricks works, including CLI conventions, auth patterns, and resource names, so it generates correct code instead of guessing.

Install

Common

databricks experimental aitools install

Specific agents

databricks experimental aitools install --agents claude-code,cursor

Project scope

databricks experimental aitools install --project

The CLI auto-detects installed coding agents and symlinks skills into each agent's config directory from a shared canonical location (~/.databricks/aitools/skills/). Skills install globally by default.

Option	Description
--global	Install globally (default)
--project	Install to project directory
--agents	Target specific agents (comma-separated)
--skills	Install specific skills only (comma-separated)
--experimental	Include experimental skills

Manage

List, update, or remove skills

databricks experimental aitools list
databricks experimental aitools update
databricks experimental aitools uninstall

update fetches the latest release and auto-installs new skills from the manifest. Pass --check to preview without downloading, --no-new to skip auto-installing new skills, or --force to re-download even if versions match. All commands accept --global (default) and --project to control scope.

Other install methods

The Skills CLI provides an alternative with interactive prompts:

npx skills add databricks/databricks-agent-skills

Cursor also supports /add-plugin databricks-skills in chat.

Available skills

Run databricks experimental aitools skills list to see available skills and their install status.

Skill	Description
databricks-apps	Build apps on Databricks Apps using AppKit. Includes references for the AppKit SDK, SQL queries, tRPC, Lakebase, Model Serving, and testing.
databricks-core	CLI operations, auth, profiles, data exploration, and bundles. Base skill for all Databricks development.
databricks-dabs	Declare, deploy, and manage Databricks resources with Declarative Automation Bundles (DABs). Covers bundle structure, deploy/run commands, resource permissions, and pipelines.
databricks-jobs	Develop and deploy Lakeflow Jobs with notebooks, Python wheels, or SQL tasks.
databricks-lakebase	Manage Lakebase Postgres Autoscaling projects, branches, and endpoints.
databricks-model-serving	Create and manage Model Serving endpoints for real-time ML inference with auto-scaling and version management.
databricks-pipelines	Develop Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines (formerly DLT). Large reference set covering streaming tables, materialized views, Auto Loader, Auto CDC, expectations, and sinks.
databricks-serverless-migration	Migrate Databricks workloads from classic compute to serverless. Covers compatibility checks, configuration, code patterns, networking, and streaming migration.

Where to next

With Databricks agent skills installed, your coding agent has the context it needs to build and deploy. Browse the templates catalog to start building.