Delete a skill

You're done with a skill. You want it gone. That's a delete:

airskills rm code-review

That one command:

• Deletes the local directory in every detected agent (~/.claude/skills/, ~/.cursor/skills/, ~/.copilot/skills/, and so on)
• Deletes the skill on the server
• Drops the entry from your local sync state so it won't come back on the next sync

If you only want to delete locally and keep the skill on the server, use --keep-remote. If you only want to delete the server copy and keep your local files, use --keep-local.

Removing a single file from a skill

Sometimes you don't want to delete the whole skill — you just moved a script or a reference file out of it. Hand-deleting that file and running airskills push looks like it works, but the next sync resurrects the file from any other agent dir that still has a copy (the same fan-out described below). The fix is to tell airskills explicitly, with a path:

airskills rm triage/scripts/dispatch-email.sh

That removes the file from every detected agent copy of the skill — so the mirror has nothing to copy back — and then pushes the skill so the server and your sync marker drop it too. Add --keep-remote to remove the file locally without pushing.

You can't remove SKILL.md this way — a skill without its manifest is broken. To delete the whole skill, drop the path and run airskills rm triage.

You don't always have to reach for the command. If you just hand-delete a file and then run airskills push (or sync), the CLI notices: it compares your local copies against the server, and if a file is missing from one agent dir but still on the server, it asks before doing anything:

? triage: these files were removed locally but still exist on the server:
      - scripts/dispatch-email.sh
  Permanently remove this file from the server and every agent copy? [y/N]

Answer y and it's removed everywhere and dropped on the server; answer n and it's restored from the server so your agent dirs match again. Running headless (cron, an agent)? It never deletes without asking — it keeps the file and prints a one-line hint pointing you at airskills rm triage/scripts/dispatch-email.sh. Use push --force to remove without the prompt.

What if I delete a folder manually?

If you rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/code-review by hand instead of using airskills rm, the next airskills sync will silently bring it back. That's not a bug — it's the same fan-out behaviour that makes hand-edits work. If you edit a skill in one agent dir, sync mirrors the edit into every other agent dir. The CLI can't tell whether a missing folder means "user deleted it" or "this agent dir just doesn't have a copy yet." Both look identical on disk, so sync errs on the side of keeping your skills present.

If sync does restore a folder you removed, it will print a one-line hint:

! code-review restored to /home/you/.claude/skills/code-review
    To delete this skill across all agents, run: airskills rm code-review
    Hand-deleting a single agent dir is silently restored by sync.

For a skill you installed from someone else's account (via airskills add), use --keep-remote — otherwise the server delete will fail with a 403 (you don't own the upstream skill):

! audio-tools restored to /home/you/.claude/skills/audio-tools
    To delete this skill across all agents, run: airskills rm audio-tools --keep-remote
    Hand-deleting a single agent dir is silently restored by sync.

The hint fires every time sync restores a hand-deleted folder. There's no per-machine "I've seen this" memory — if you keep hand-deleting, sync keeps reminding you. Run airskills rm once and the noise stops.

When to use --keep-remote

You added someone else's skill, you want it off this machine, but you don't want to delete their original (you can't anyway — only the owner can). --keep-remote deletes locally and leaves the server copy alone:

airskills rm alice/audio-tools --keep-remote

When to use --keep-local

You want to stop publishing this skill to anyone who has airskills addd it, but you want to keep your local copy around as a private working file. --keep-local removes the server skill and leaves your local files in place:

airskills rm my-experimental-skill --keep-local

What other people see

If anyone has installed your skill via airskills add and you delete it from the server, their next airskills pull will report the skill as upstream-archived. Their local copy keeps working — they just stop getting updates from you.

A polite delete of a widely-used skill is worth a small announcement, so people aren't surprised when their airskills sync reports it gone.

Things to know

• airskills rm walks every detected agent directory. If a copy exists in .claude/skills/, .cursor/skills/, .copilot/skills/, and so on, all three get removed in one pass.
• --keep-remote and --keep-local are mutually meaningful but not mutually exclusive on the command line — passing both means "do nothing on the server AND keep local files", which is a no-op. The command rejects this combination.
• Server-side delete is a soft delete. If you change your mind shortly after, your skill can be restored — contact support if you need this.