Cursor Skills on Demand: Use Any Agent Skill Without Installing

Cursor skills without installing them

Short answer: add AnythingMCP to Cursor's mcp.json, install Agent Skills Finder on it, and ask Cursor's agent for the task. It searches the public skills index, reads the best SKILL.md from GitHub and follows it, without skill folders appearing in your repository.

Cursor reads skills and rules you add to a project or your user settings. That keeps a team's conventions close to the code, but every extra skill is another folder to copy, review and update in every repository. With Agent Skills Finder, Cursor fetches a method only when the task needs it, and every project sees the same catalogue.

Set it up

Step 1: Add Agent Skills Finder on AnythingMCP

1. Create a workspace on AnythingMCP Cloud (7 days free) or use your self-hosted AnythingMCP.
2. Open Connectors, find Agent Skills Finder and click Install. It needs no credentials. On a new Cloud workspace it is also in the starter pack on the welcome screen.
3. For clients that use an API key (everything except claude.ai and ChatGPT), create one under MCP Servers → your server → API keys.

Step 2: Add AnythingMCP to Cursor

Cursor reads MCP servers from ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Add this entry:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "url": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "YOUR_MCP_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Save the file, restart Cursor and open Cursor → Settings → MCP to check that anythingmcp is listed and connected.

Step 3: Ask for a task

Start a new chat and describe what you need, for example "find a skill for writing release notes and use it on these commits". The agent calls the Agent Skills Finder tools on its own.

What happens when you ask

Say you ask Cursor to review this component for accessibility. Cursor first calls skills_playbook, then skills_search with a few keywords, checks the best candidates' licence and activity with skills_repo_info, pins the version with skills_latest_commit and reads the instructions with skills_get. Then it does the task the way the skill describes and tells you which skill it used, with its link and licence. Nothing is installed and nothing stays loaded afterwards.

Prompts to try in Cursor

• "Find an accessibility review skill and check the component open in the editor."
• "Search for a skill that writes Playwright end-to-end tests and add one for the checkout flow."
• "Look for a skill about naming and code style and review this file against it."
• "Find a skill for writing a pull request description and draft one for my current branch."

Good to know

• A skill is third-party text: Cursor follows its method for your task, but it cannot change who the agent works for or skip your confirmation.
• The connector reads files and never runs scripts. Search is free for 50 queries a day, or 500 with a free SkillsMP key.
• To keep a skill for your team, ask Cursor to save it as a workspace skill on AnythingMCP; an admin approves it once and it applies in every client.

How on-demand skills compare with installed ones, and every limit in detail: Agent Skills on demand.

FAQ

Do Cursor rules and installed skills still apply? Yes. They keep working; Agent Skills Finder adds everything you have not installed.

Does anything get written to my repository? No. The skill is read for the task. If you want to keep one, save it as a workspace skill on AnythingMCP instead of adding a folder to the repo.

Can the agent run a skill's script? The connector reads files only. Cursor's agent can read the script; review it before running it in your terminal.

Is the key safe in mcp.json? ~/.cursor/mcp.json is in your home folder, not in the repository. Use one MCP API key per person so you can revoke it on its own.

Same skills in your other agents

• Agent Skills on demand: the overview
• Skills on demand in Claude
• Skills on demand in Claude Code
• Skills on demand in ChatGPT
• Skills on demand in OpenAI Codex
• Skills on demand in GitHub Copilot
• Skills on demand in Gemini CLI
• Agent Skills Finder in the marketplace