Agent Skills Setup

Before you begin

The skills need two things to do real work:

The CompetLab MCP server configured with your API key. This is how every skill reaches your data. If you haven’t set it up, follow the Connect guide first — it’s the hard prerequisite. Without it, a skill tells you it can’t run. A read key is enough for the whole suite.
A CompetLab project with competitors being monitored — for six of the seven skills. They read your monitoring data, so you need an account and at least one project set up. New here? Create a free account and set up your first project first. A trial works. The exception is competlab-site-audit, which runs on any public domain with no project and no competitors configured — a free-trial key is enough.

Authentication lives entirely in the MCP configuration. There’s no separate skill-level API key to set.

Install

Pick whichever path fits your setup — all three install the same seven skills and work identically. Every skill carries what it needs inside its own folder, so nothing depends on which path you chose.

Marketplace (recommended)

In a recent version of Claude Code, add the marketplace and install the plugin:


/plugin marketplace add competlab/competlab-ci-skills
/plugin install competlab-ci-skills@competlab-ci-skills

The install string is plugin@marketplace — both happen to be named competlab-ci-skills. This is the cleanest path for Claude Code: it keeps the skills updatable through the marketplace.

skills CLI

The skills CLI installs from the same repo into any agent that reads the format. Add all of them:


npx skills add competlab/competlab-ci-skills --all

Or add a single skill by slug:


npx skills add competlab/competlab-ci-skills --skill competlab-ai-visibility

Add -g to install globally rather than into the current project:


npx skills add competlab/competlab-ci-skills --all -g

Manual copy

Clone the repo and copy the skills into your agent’s skills directory:


git clone https://github.com/competlab/competlab-ci-skills.git
mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r competlab-ci-skills/skills/. .claude/skills/

The trailing /. copies the seven skill folders themselves rather than nesting them one level deeper. Each folder carries its own references/ — the platform facts and the reporting rules — so the copy is complete on its own.

The suite is released on GitHub; this page describes v3.3.2 .

Confirm the MCP connection

The skills are only as useful as the MCP connection behind them. Before running one, confirm your agent can reach CompetLab — ask it to list your projects, or check that the mcp__competlab__* tools are available. If the connection isn’t there, the skills will say so rather than invent data. (Details in the Connect guide.)

Run your first skill

Skills trigger on plain-language requests — each one advertises the phrasings it responds to, so you don’t memorize commands. A few examples:


Are we in the core? AI visibility report for my Acme project.
Why are they recommended and not us?
Catch me up on what changed with competitors.
Write a battlecard for Rival Inc.
Deep dive on competitor rival.com.
Audit example.com for agent adoption.
Am I tracking the right competitors?

Your agent recognizes the intent, loads the matching skill, pulls the data through the MCP server, and writes the deliverable. For a single-competitor skill like the battlecard or the dossier, name the competitor; for the site audit, name the domain; for the rest, name the project if you have more than one.

Try it with no project

competlab-site-audit is the one skill that works before a project exists. It runs on any public domain with no project and no competitors configured — crawler access, sitemap coverage, agent adoption, tech stack, trust signals, and whether a claimed MCP server answers the protocol or only a browser. It still reads through the authenticated MCP server, so a CompetLab API key is required; a free-trial key is enough.


Audit example.com for agent adoption.

Other agents

The skills are written for Claude Code, and the tool names inside them use Claude Code’s mcp__competlab__* convention. Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, and any agent that reads the SKILL.md format can run them too — you may need to adjust the tool names to match how your client namespaces MCP tools.

Next steps

Skill reference → — all seven skills, what each reads, and the phrasings that trigger them.
MCP Connect → — set up or double-check the MCP server the skills depend on.