Buildkite Skills

The official Buildkite skills for Claude Code, Cursor, and other AI coding agents. Install them into your agent of choice so it can generate correct pipeline YAML, run bk and buildkite-agent CLI commands, call the API, configure agents, and run preflight builds.

Installation

hljs language-bash

npx skills add buildkite/skills

See skills.sh for supported agents and options.

Cursor

Search for Buildkite Skills in the Cursor Marketplace, or run /add-plugin and search for "Buildkite".

Kiro

Recommended (one install): add the Buildkite power in the Powers panel, pointing at github.com/buildkite/skills. The root POWER.md, mcp.json, and steering/ together give Kiro the Buildkite MCP server plus all six workflows (pipelines, migration, preflight, agent-runtime, CLI, API), loaded automatically when relevant.

Alternatively, install individual workflows as Kiro skills via the Skills panel — each skills/buildkite-*/ directory already conforms to the open Agent Skills standard.

Manual

Copy skill directories into your agent's skills folder:

hljs language-bash

# Claude Code
mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r skills/buildkite-pipelines .claude/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-preflight .claude/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-agent-runtime .claude/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-cli .claude/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-api .claude/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-migration .claude/skills/

# Cursor
mkdir -p .cursor/skills
cp -r skills/buildkite-pipelines .cursor/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-preflight .cursor/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-agent-runtime .cursor/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-cli .cursor/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-api .cursor/skills/
cp -r skills/buildkite-migration .cursor/skills/

Skills

Journey Skills

Skills organized by what you are trying to accomplish.

Skill	Directory	Description
Pipelines	skills/buildkite-pipelines/	Pipeline YAML, step types, plugins, caching, parallelism, dynamic pipelines, matrix builds, artifacts, hooks
Migration	skills/buildkite-migration/	CI migration planning, converting from GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, Bitbucket Pipelines, GitLab CI using `bk pipeline convert`

Cross-Cutting Skills

Skills needed across all journeys.

Skill	Directory	Description
Preflight	skills/buildkite-preflight/	`bk preflight` runs a CI build against local uncommitted changes
Agent Runtime	skills/buildkite-agent-runtime/	`buildkite-agent` subcommands inside running job steps — annotate, artifact, meta-data, pipeline upload, OIDC, locks
CLI	skills/buildkite-cli/	`bk` commands for builds, jobs, pipelines, secrets, artifacts, and auth
API	skills/buildkite-api/	REST API, GraphQL API, webhooks, authentication, pagination

How Skills Differ from Docs

Buildkite docs at buildkite.com/docs are the canonical reference for what Buildkite features exist and how they work.

Skills serve a different purpose: they encode expertise. Where docs explain every option, skills teach agents the right defaults, common patterns, and mistakes to avoid. A skill captures the judgment an experienced Buildkite user applies — which step type to reach for, how to structure a dynamic pipeline, when to use OIDC instead of static tokens.

In practice this means:

Skills assume the agent already understands YAML, CI/CD concepts, and general programming
SKILL.md files focus on quick starts, recommended patterns, and pitfall tables — not exhaustive option lists
Detailed reference material lives in references/ subdirectories, loaded only when needed
Skills link to Buildkite docs rather than reproducing them

For more on content strategy, see CONVENTIONS.md.

Contributing

Read CONVENTIONS.md — frontmatter format, section order, style rules, skill boundaries, quality checklist
Review an existing complete skill as a quality benchmark (e.g. skills/buildkite-pipelines/SKILL.md)
Check the boundary table in CONVENTIONS.md — each topic is owned by exactly one skill
Write your skill following the section order and style rules

Documentation

Full Buildkite docs at buildkite.com/docs.

License

MIT

skills