Agent skills give AI coding agents structured knowledge about how to use fallow. Skills cover when to run each command, what flags to use, how to read the output, and how to avoid common pitfalls. Instead of relying on the agent's general knowledge, skills provide precise, up-to-date instructions for codebase health, cleanup analysis, circular dependency detection, duplication, and complexity hotspots.
Skills work alongside the CLI and MCP integrations. They tell agents how to use fallow effectively, while the CLI and MCP provide the tools to do it.
The fallow-skills package includes:
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Analysis skill | Workflows for unused code, duplication, complexity, boundary analysis, auto-fix, and CI setup |
| CLI reference | Complete command specs, flags, output formats, and configuration |
| Gotchas | Common pitfalls with correct vs. incorrect examples (e.g., fix --yes in non-TTY) |
| Workflow patterns | Recipes for CI pipelines, monorepo analysis, migrating from knip/jscpd, and incremental adoption |
A project that already has fallow installed from npm can skip the manual steps: fallow agent install writes the skill where Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor look for it, together with the MCP registration, an AGENTS.md task map, and the commit/push gate. --dry-run shows the plan first.
/plugin marketplace add fallow-rs/fallow-skills
/plugin install fallow-skills@fallow-rs/fallow-skillsSkills follow the open Agent Skills specification and work with any compatible agent.
Once installed, agents know how to respond to natural language requests like these:
"Find all unused exports in this project". Agent runs fallow dead-code --format json --quiet --unused-exports and summarizes findings.
"Are there any unused dependencies?" Agent runs targeted analysis and suggests removals.
"Find code duplication in the codebase". Agent runs fallow dupes with the right mode and interprets clone families.
"Remove unused exports". Agent runs dry-run first, shows proposed changes, then applies with --yes.
"Set up a code quality gate in CI". Agent generates the correct GitHub Actions workflow with baselines.
"Why is this export flagged?" Agent uses --trace to investigate and suggests suppression if needed.
| Skills | MCP | CLI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it provides | Knowledge about how to use fallow | Structured tool interface | Direct command execution |
| Setup | One-time install per agent | MCP server configuration | fallow binary in PATH |
| Agent support | Any agent with skill support | Agents with MCP support | Any agent that runs shell commands |
| Best for | Teaching agents fallow best practices | Typed tool calling in agent frameworks | Universal compatibility |
For the best experience, combine all three. Install the skill for knowledge, configure MCP for structured tool calling, and keep fallow in PATH for CLI fallback.