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Skills are pre-built workflows that orchestrate Narrative’s MCP server to complete specific tasks — drafting NQL queries, generating Rosetta Stone mappings, building identity graphs, and more. Skills are harness-agnostic: you can install them with the standalone skills CLI into any spec-compliant agent, or as Claude Code plugins.

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Prerequisites

  • An agent runtime that loads skills. Either:
    • Any agentskills.io-compliant agent (used with the skills CLI), or
    • Claude Code, updated to a version that supports the /plugin command.
  • The Narrative MCP server connected to that agent. See Connecting to the Narrative MCP Server if you haven’t set this up yet.
  • A Narrative account with access to the active company you want the skills to operate against.
Skills run inside your agent and call the MCP server on your behalf. Without an active MCP connection, skills can’t reach your Narrative data.

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Install skills

Each skill’s detail page in the Skills catalog shows an Installation picker with the two options below. Pick whichever matches your agent.
The standalone skills CLI installs a skill’s rendered SKILL.md into any spec-compliant agent. No repo clone, no Bun runtime, no Claude Code required.
1

Add the Narrative skills marketplace

Run the install command from any skill’s detail page, or globally for the whole marketplace:
npx skills add narrative-io/narrative-skills-marketplace
The CLI fetches the marketplace and installs every available skill into your active agent’s skills directory.
2

Verify the skill is loaded

Open your agent and ask it to describe the skills it has available. You should see entries such as Find Attribute, Write NQL, and Design Analysis.

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Use a skill

Once a plugin is installed, you invoke its skills with natural-language prompts. Claude routes the request to the matching skill and follows its instructions. For example, with the narrative-common plugin installed: 
Find the Rosetta Stone attribute for a SHA-256 hashed email.
Claude calls the Find Attribute skill, which uses the narrative_attributes_search and narrative_attributes_describe MCP tools to resolve the description to a canonical attribute ID (sha256_hashed_email). Each skill’s detail page in the Skills catalog lists example prompts, accepted arguments, and the use cases each one addresses.

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Slash commands and arguments

Many skills also expose a slash-command form with explicit arguments. For example, Write NQL accepts --dataset, --run, and --limit: 
/write-nql --dataset 123 --run --limit 50 distinct users in the last 30 days
The slash-command form is useful for scripting, scoping a skill to a specific dataset, or chaining skills together. See each skill’s Arguments table on its detail page for the full list of flags and defaults.
Skills that produce artifacts — NQL queries, workflow specifications, mapping definitions — always show you the draft and wait for explicit approval before submitting it. You can edit the draft or ask Claude to revise it before saying “go.”

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Where skills run

Skills run on your machine inside the agent you installed them into. They reach Narrative through the MCP server using the OAuth credential you established when you connected the agent to the server. Skills never bypass MCP — every action they take is a tool call you can inspect in the agent’s transcript. This also means skills inherit MCP’s company scoping: they operate against whichever company is active in your MCP session. Use the narrative_context_set_company tool (or ask the agent to switch companies) before invoking a skill if you need to target a different account.

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Update or remove a skill

If you used the skills CLI, rerun the add command to pick up newer versions, or use the CLI’s remove command to uninstall: 
npx skills add narrative-io/narrative-skills-marketplace
If you used Claude Code, manage plugins with /plugin: 
/plugin update narrative-common@narrative-skills-marketplace
/plugin uninstall narrative-common@narrative-skills-marketplace
The skill version shown on each catalog detail page matches the semver in the skill’s SKILL.md frontmatter. Reinstall to pick up newer versions.

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Next steps

Skills concepts

How skills relate to the MCP server, plugins, and runtimes.

MCP tool reference

The underlying tools that skills call.

Connect to the MCP server

Set up the OAuth connection skills depend on.

Browse the Skills catalog

Every published skill with example prompts and install commands.