Getting started

Cardano Dev Skills works in four modes. Pick the one that matches your agent.

Claude Code

In any Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add cardano-foundation/cardano-dev-skills
/plugin install cardano-dev-skills@cardano-dev-skills

Installed once, active in every Claude Code session in any directory. Verify with:

/plugin list

Run the two commands in that order. Adding the marketplace first is what registers it; going straight to /plugin install makes the client resolve the repository itself, which can fall back to an SSH URL and fail with git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey) even though this repository is public and clones fine over HTTPS.

Claude Code auto-updates plugins only from marketplaces with auto-update on, and third-party marketplaces like this one start with it off. Turn it on once: run /plugin, open Marketplaces, select cardano-dev-skills, and choose Enable auto-update. To update by hand, run claude plugin update cardano-dev-skills@cardano-dev-skills from your shell and restart.

Claude Cowork (desktop, web, mobile)

Cowork uses the same plugin format, so this marketplace works there unchanged.

Open Customize and go to the Plugins tab.
Under Personal plugins, click +, then Add marketplace.
Choose Add from a repository and enter: https://github.com/cardano-foundation/cardano-dev-skills
Install cardano-dev-skills from the marketplace once it syncs.

You get the same skills as the Claude Code plugin. Cowork syncs the whole repository, and docs/sources/ is roughly 30 MB of bundled documentation, so the first sync is not instant.

Codex

On macOS, Linux, or WSL, keep this repository and your Cardano project as sibling directories:

cd /path/to/projects
git clone https://github.com/cardano-foundation/cardano-dev-skills.git
cd your-cardano-project
mkdir -p .agents
ln -s ../../cardano-dev-skills/skills .agents/skills

On Windows PowerShell, create a directory junction from the Cardano project:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force .agents
New-Item -ItemType Junction -Path .agents\skills -Target (Resolve-Path ..\cardano-dev-skills\skills)

Start or restart Codex in your-cardano-project, run /skills, and confirm the Cardano skills appear. Then run $cardano-context once to add the durable project directive.

Codex discovers repository skills under .agents/skills and follows linked skill directories. The repository also includes .codex-plugin/plugin.json for plugin packaging and publishing; until that plugin is published in a directory, the repository link above is the supported installation path.

Install the per-project directive

Either agent can answer Cardano questions from stale model knowledge when a skill description does not match the prompt. Run the cardano-context skill once per project to install a durable, agent-neutral directive:

# Claude Code marketplace plugin
/cardano-dev-skills:cardano-context

# Codex
$cardano-context

What it does:

Writes the same version-tagged block into the project’s CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md. Claude reads the former; Codex reads the latter.
Tells either agent to treat model knowledge as potentially stale, select the relevant skill, resolve bundled docs/sources/ from that skill’s location, and cite what it used.
Commit both files and teammates inherit the directive on clone.
Re-running is safe: same version is a no-op; older versions are atomically replaced.

A project-local Claude skill may also appear as /cardano-context; the plugin-qualified form above avoids collisions with skills from other plugins.

Standalone

Skills are pure Markdown — read skills/*/SKILL.md directly, or grep them.

First prompt

Once installed, ask the agent something concrete that should match a skill:

“Scaffold a new Cardano project with Aiken on-chain and Mesh SDK off-chain.”

You should see the agent invoke the scaffold-project skill. If it doesn’t, nudge explicitly:

“Use the scaffold-project skill from cardano-dev-skills.”

See How it works for the three context mechanisms and how to tell when one of them is doing the work.