Guide

Install Nylas Skills for AI Coding Agents

The nylas/skills repository ships two drop-in skills — nylas-cli and nylas-api — that teach Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, Windsurf, and 30+ other AI coding agents how to use Nylas without any per-agent OAuth or MCP wiring. One command installs both.

Written by Qasim Muhammad Staff SRE

Verified — CLI 3.1.1 · Gmail, Outlook · last tested May 4, 2026

What is a Nylas skill?

An Agent Skill is a small, version-controlled bundle of instructions and examples that an AI coding agent loads alongside your project. The agent reads the skill the same way it reads your README — except the skill is curated for the agent and ships with worked examples, command syntax, and conventions. The nylas/skills repository ships two:

  • nylas-cli — teaches the agent how to send email, manage calendar events, sync contacts, and use the MCP server from the terminal. Pairs with the command reference.
  • nylas-api — teaches the agent how to build integrations against the Nylas v3 REST API: grants, OAuth, webhooks, scheduler, transactional send.

Skills work alongside (not instead of) the MCP integration. The Model Context Protocol gives the agent live access to your inbox; skills give it the knowledge of how to call that access correctly.

Install for Claude Code

Claude Code consumes skills through its plugin marketplace. From the Claude Code prompt, run:

/plugin marketplace add nylas/skills

Both nylas-cli and nylas-api become available. Claude Code surfaces them in the skills picker and loads them on demand when the conversation matches their description.

Install for Cursor, Codex CLI, Windsurf, and others

Every other agent uses the universal skills CLI — an open-source installer (npm package skills) that supports claude-code, cursor, codex, cline, continue, github-copilot, and 40+ other agents. Run it from your project root:

# Install both Nylas skills
npx skills add nylas/skills

# Or install one at a time
npx skills add nylas/skills --skill nylas-cli
npx skills add nylas/skills --skill nylas-api

The installer detects your agent (Cursor, Codex CLI, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and 30+ others), writes the skill files to the location each agent expects (.cursor/, AGENTS.md, .claude-plugin/, and so on), and registers them with the agent's manifest. No manual file copying.

Verify the skills loaded

After install, ask the agent a question that should trigger one of the skills, for example:

  • "Use nylas-cli to send an email from my Gmail account to test@example.com."
  • "Use nylas-api to list grants for my application."

A working install responds with the correct nylas email send invocation or the right v3 endpoint without you re-explaining the syntax. If the agent still asks for documentation, restart it so it picks up the new skill manifest.

Develop a fork or local copy

If you fork the repo to add internal-only conventions, the installer accepts a local path:

cd /path/to/your/project
npx skills add /path/to/your/fork --agent claude-code --copy --all

The --copy flag inlines the skill files into the project so they ship with the repo, rather than referencing the installed copy.

Next steps