Agent Skills in IntelliJ IDEA

Agent Skills have become a key building block of the Agent Harness for AI-driven agentic development. They give AI agents additional capabilities and knowledge, enabling them to complete tasks in a way that aligns with your preferences.

If you are new to Agent Skills, I recommend reading AI-Assisted Java Application Development with Agent Skills first.

IntelliJ IDEA and other JetBrains IDEs include AI Assistant, which helps developers with AI agentic development. AI Assistant provides an elegant and secure way to use and manage Agent Skills.

If you missed the announcement, see Introducing the Skill Manager and Skill Repository.

In this article, we will explore:

How to install Agent Skills via the Skills Manager.

Managing skills with the Skill Repository.

Installing skills globally, per project, or per agent.

Adding your own Skill Repository.

Skills Manager

AI Assistant supports a wide range of AI agents through ACP (Agent Client Protocol).

The Skills Manager in AI Assistant lets you view the list of available skills and install them.

If you have already installed Agent Skills globally, the Skills Manager detects them and helps you install them as IntelliJ IDEA agent skills.

You can install a skill globally, at the project level, or per agent.

Skill Repositories

The Skill Repository lets you manage a list of locations where your verified skills are stored.

By default, JetBrains provides a Skill Repository hosted at https://github.com/JetBrains/skills.

These skills are verified by JetBrains for security vulnerabilities.

It is essential to check for security issues before using agent skills downloaded from the internet. A better approach is to maintain an organization-wide Skill Repository, verified by your team, and add it to the Skill Repository list.

Agent Skills in action

Based on the prompt description, the AI agent automatically detects and uses relevant agent skills.

For example, I installed spring-boot-skill, and when I asked the AI agent to write tests for Spring Boot REST API endpoints, it used the spring-boot-skill.

You can also explicitly invoke an agent skill using $skill-name [prompt] with Codex or `/skill-name [prompt]` with Claude.

Summary

AI Assistant’s Skills Manager makes agent skills part of your regular IDE workflow. You can discover, install, and manage skills without leaving IntelliJ IDEA, then make them available globally, for a specific project, or only to a particular AI agent. The AI agent can automatically select a relevant skill from your prompt, while explicit invocation gives you control when you need it.

Just as importantly, the Skill Repository provides access to skills verified by JetBrains for security vulnerabilities. Teams can also add their own repositories containing internally reviewed skills. This makes it easier to benefit from reusable agent capabilities while maintaining control over which skills developers use in their projects.