👉 Visit the DatoCMS homepage or see What is DatoCMS?

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DatoCMS Skills

A collection of agent skills that teach Claude, Codex, Cursor, and other coding agents how to work effectively with DatoCMS — from GraphQL queries and content management scripts to content modeling, plugin development, and one-shot project setup.

All open source, with native plugin support on Claude Code and Codex and a universal npx skills installer for everything else.

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Skills or MCP?

DatoCMS offers two AI integrations and they don't overlap:

• MCP server — for editors and PMs who want an agent to read and update a project from anywhere (web, mobile, no local setup).
• Agent Skills (this repo) — for developers in their editor or CLI. A superset of MCP: every MCP capability is reachable here via npx datocms …, plus content modeling, frontend integrations, migrations, plugin development, and more.

If you're shipping code, you want Skills.

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What's covered

The skills are designed to work together — they cross-link and reinforce each other, so the default install brings the full set. Most trigger automatically based on your prompt; datocms-setup is invoked explicitly.

Building with DatoCMS

• Content modeling — schema-design decisions: model vs block, references vs embedded blocks, taxonomies, field shapes, validators, editor appearances.
• Reading content — GraphQL queries against the Content Delivery API with filters, pagination, localization, Structured Text, responsive images, SEO, and typed queries.
• Writing content & automation — record CRUD, bulk imports/exports, asset uploads, environment forks and promotions, webhooks, roles, scheduled publishing, audit logs.
• CLI workflows — migrations, schema-type generation, typed CMA scripts, CI/CD pipelines, WordPress/Contentful imports.
• Frontend integrations — draft mode, Web Previews, Visual Editing, Content Link, real-time preview subscriptions, cache-tag invalidation, SEO/sitemap wiring across Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, and Astro.
• One-shot setup (datocms-setup) — the only skill you invoke explicitly. Bootstraps multi-step flows like "set up visual editing" in a single command, queueing prerequisites automatically.

Extending the DatoCMS dashboard

• Plugin scaffolding — bootstrap a brand-new plugin (Vite/React, initial surfaces).
• Plugin maintenance — patch and extend an existing plugin: hooks, field extensions, sidebars, validations.
• Plugin design system — restyle plugin UI to feel native to the DatoCMS dashboard.

For the full list of skill names, internal setup recipes, and routing rules see docs/skill-catalog.md.

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Install

Pick the install method for your agent. Every installer brings the full set by default — the skills are cross-linked and meant to work together.

Claude Code (recommended)

/plugin marketplace add datocms/agent-skills
/plugin install datocms@datocms-skills

Skills are namespaced under the plugin (e.g. /datocms-cda). Enable auto-update from /plugin → Marketplaces → datocms-skills, or update manually with claude plugin update datocms@datocms-skills.

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add datocms/agent-skills

Then open a Codex session and install from the plugin picker:

/plugins

Choose DatoCMS and "Install plugin"

Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and other agents

npx skills add datocms/agent-skills

Update later with npx skills update. For scopes, single-skill installs, and detached snapshots see docs/install.md.

Claude.ai (web)

On the web you can't run CLI commands or edit local files, so most development-focused skills don't apply. The ones worth uploading are datocms-content-modeling.zip (content modeling) and datocms-cma.zip (writing content & automation) — best paired with the DatoCMS MCP server, which lets the agent read and update your project directly from the conversation.

Upload the .zip files via Customize → Skills in claude.ai. The full set of pre-built zips lives in the zips/ folder.

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Usage

Automatic skills

You don't need to invoke the auto-triggered skills — describe what you want in plain language and the right one activates:

• "Should testimonials be a model or a block?"
• "How should I structure a multi-locale schema with shared blocks?"
• "Write a GraphQL query to fetch all blog posts with images"
• "How do I paginate past the 100-record limit?"
• "Add draft mode to my Next.js app"
• "Why isn't my Visual Editing overlay showing up?"
• "Create a migration that adds a category field to the blog_post model"
• "What's the safest way to run a migration in production?"
• "Bulk-publish all draft records of type article"
• "Publish them"
• "Fix those slugs"
• "Import this CSV into the authors model"
• "Make my plugin config screen match the DatoCMS style"
• "Create a new DatoCMS plugin from scratch"

The setup skill (explicit)

datocms-setup is the only skill you invoke explicitly. It handles one-shot project bootstrapping (draft mode, visual editing, migrations workflows, content imports, etc.) and queues prerequisites automatically when needed.

Platform	Invocation
Claude Code	/datocms-setup <your request>
Codex	$datocms-setup <your request>

Phrase the prompt as the outcome you want. Terms like content link, visual editing, click-to-edit, or draft mode help the router pick the right recipe.

/datocms-setup install visual editing in this project
/datocms-setup set up draft mode and web previews
/datocms-setup add migrations and a release workflow
/datocms-setup set up click-to-edit overlays for draft pages

If a prerequisite is missing (e.g. draft mode is needed before web previews), setup queues it in the same run instead of requiring a second call.

Every recipe ends with one of two statuses: scaffolded if it still contains placeholders you need to fill in (API tokens, route mappings, model-to-URL maps, TODO stubs), or production-ready if it's wired to real project values and works end-to-end with no further edits. No guessing whether the output is ready to ship.

For the full recipe catalog and routing rules see docs/skill-catalog.md.

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Documentation

• docs/install.md — installation reference (scopes, single-skill installs, detached snapshots, update mechanics)
• docs/skill-catalog.md — full skill catalog, internal setup recipes, and routing rules
• docs/repo-layout.md — repository layout and the reasoning behind it
• docs/maintenance.md — contributor and maintainer workflows (validation, regenerating zips, release notes)
• evals/README.md — trigger-quality evaluation framework

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License & contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome on github.com/datocms/agent-skills. See docs/maintenance.md for the contributor workflow.

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What is DatoCMS?

DatoCMS is Headless CMS for the modern web. Trusted by 25,000+ businesses, agencies, and individuals, it gives your team one place to manage content and ship it to any website, app, or device via API.

New here? Start with Create free account and the Documentation. Stuck? Ask the Community. Curious what's new? Product Updates.

Building with AI: Agent Skills turn coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor) into expert DatoCMS developers, with full read/write via the auto-installed CLI. No local terminal? Use the MCP Server instead.

Talking to DatoCMS from code:

• Content Delivery API (CDA) — the fast, read-only GraphQL API your website/app uses to fetch published content.
• Content Management API (CMA) — the REST API for creating and updating content, models, and project settings (think scripts, migrations, integrations).
• CLI — terminal tool for schema migrations and importing from Contentful/WordPress.

Framework guides: end-to-end recipes for fetching content, rendering Structured Text, optimizing images/video, handling SEO, and setting up live preview with visual editing in Next.js, Nuxt, Svelte, and Astro.

Want a head start? Browse our starter projects — ready-to-deploy example sites for popular frameworks.