Getting Started

Overview

@tanstack/intent is a CLI for shipping and consuming Agent Skills as package artifacts.

Skills are markdown documents that teach AI coding agents how to use your library correctly. Intent versions them with your releases and ships them inside npm packages. It discovers skills from project and workspace dependencies, then provides commands and guidance for loading them.

What Intent does

Intent provides tooling for two workflows:

For consumers:

  • Discover skills from your project and workspace dependencies

  • Control which packages' skills are surfaced with an allowlist

  • Add lightweight skill loading guidance to your agent config

  • Add session catalogs and edit gates for supported agents

  • Use skills packaged with installed library versions

    For maintainers (library teams):

  • Scaffold skills through AI-assisted domain discovery

  • Validate SKILL.md format and packaging

  • Ship skills in the same release pipeline as code

  • Review version, source, artifact, and package coverage signals

How it works

Discovery and installation

Use the runner for your package manager:

ToolPattern
npmnpx @tanstack/intent@latest <command>
pnpmpnpm dlx @tanstack/intent@latest <command>
Yarnyarn dlx @tanstack/intent@latest <command>
Bunbunx @tanstack/intent@latest <command>
shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest list

Scans the current project's installed dependencies for intent-enabled packages, including node_modules, workspace dependencies, and Yarn PnP projects without node_modules. You can narrow which packages are surfaced with package.json#intent.skills. See the Trust model and Configuration for how the allowlist works. Global package scanning is explicit; pass --global to include global packages or --global-only to ignore local packages. When both local and global packages are scanned, local packages take precedence.

shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest install

Creates or updates lightweight intent-skills guidance in your config files (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, etc.). Existing guidance is updated in place; otherwise AGENTS.md is the default target. Pass --map to opt in to explicit task-to-skill mappings.

shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest hooks install

Installs session catalogs and edit gates for supported agents. Project-scoped hooks are available for Claude Code and Codex. GitHub Copilot CLI project guidance can live in .github/copilot-instructions.md, while blocking hooks are user-scoped. Cursor and generic AGENTS.md agents use guidance only. See intent hooks for what hooks can observe.

shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest load @tanstack/query#fetching

Loads the matching SKILL.md content for the installed package version. Pass --path when you need the resolved skill file path for debugging.

Scaffolding and validation

shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest scaffold

Guides your agent through domain discovery, tree generation, and skill authoring with interactive maintainer interviews.

shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest validate

Enforces SKILL.md format rules and packaging requirements before publish.

Staleness tracking

shell
npx @tanstack/intent@latest stale

Reports version drift and source, artifact, or package coverage signals that may require skill review.