Agent skills

Agent skills are instruction files that AI coding assistants load to perform Databricks development tasks. Databricks publishes its skills in the databricks/databricks-agent-skills repository and follows the open agent skills standard.

Skills tell your coding agent how Databricks works, including CLI conventions, authentication patterns, and resource names, so it generates correct code instead of guessing.

Install

Install the official Databricks agent skills with the following command:

Common

databricks aitools install

note

This requires the Databricks CLI to be installed. See Databricks CLI for installation instructions.

The CLI detects which coding agents you have installed and links the skills into each agent's config directory from a shared location (~/.databricks/aitools/skills/).

The following flags are available for the databricks aitools install command:

Option	Description
`--scope=global`	Install globally (default)
`--scope=project`	Install to project directory
`--scope=both`	Apply to both scopes (valid on `update`/`uninstall`)
`--agents`	Target specific agents (comma-separated, e.g. `--agents cursor,claude-code`)
`--skills`	Install specific skills only (comma-separated)
`--experimental`	Include experimental skills

Run databricks aitools install --help for the full list of options.

Manage

List, update, or remove skills

databricks aitools list
databricks aitools update
databricks aitools uninstall

update fetches the latest release and auto-installs new skills. Pass --check to preview without downloading, --no-new to skip auto-installing new skills, or --force to re-download even if versions match.

All commands accept --scope=global (default), --scope=project, or --scope=both to control scope.

Alternative install methods

You can also install Databricks skills with the Skills CLI (e.g. npx skills add databricks/databricks-agent-skills) or directly from Cursor chat with /add-plugin databricks-skills. That said, databricks aitools install is the recommended method — it's maintained by Databricks and always installs the latest stable versions.

Available skills

Run databricks aitools skills list to see available skills and their install status.

Skill	Description
`databricks-apps`	Build apps on Databricks Apps using AppKit. Includes references for the AppKit SDK, SQL queries, tRPC, Lakebase, Model Serving, and testing.
`databricks-core`	CLI operations, auth, profiles, data exploration, and bundles. Base skill for all Databricks development.
`databricks-dabs`	Declare, deploy, and manage Databricks resources with Declarative Automation Bundles (DABs). Covers bundle structure, deploy/run commands, resource permissions, and pipelines.
`databricks-jobs`	Develop and deploy Lakeflow Jobs with notebooks, Python wheels, or SQL tasks.
`databricks-lakebase`	Manage Lakebase Postgres Autoscaling projects, branches, and endpoints.
`databricks-model-serving`	Create and manage Model Serving endpoints for real-time ML inference with auto-scaling and version management.
`databricks-pipelines`	Develop Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines (formerly DLT). Large reference set covering streaming tables, materialized views, Auto Loader, Auto CDC, expectations, and sinks.
`databricks-serverless-migration`	Migrate Databricks workloads from classic compute to serverless. Covers compatibility checks, configuration, code patterns, networking, and streaming migration.

Where to next

With Databricks agent skills installed, your coding agent has the context it needs to build and deploy.

To give your agent further context, install the Docs MCP Server.
Ready to start building? Read about how templates can help you quickly scaffold your project.