Amp Code Skills: How to Use SKILL.md with Sourcegraph's Coding Agent (2026)

Quick Answer: Amp Code supports SKILL.md skills in project and personal directories. Skills load automatically when Amp detects a matching task. Amp's Sourcegraph code intelligence means skills can reference cross-repository context that other agents miss, making skills more effective on large codebases. Install community skills from agensi.io/skills or write your own.

Amp Code is Sourcegraph's AI coding agent, rebranded from Cody in 2026. It brings Sourcegraph's decade of code intelligence infrastructure to agentic coding: cross-repository search, dependency chain analysis, and usage pattern indexing. This makes Amp uniquely powerful for large codebases.

Skills make Amp even better by giving it domain-specific instructions for tasks like code review, testing, documentation, and architecture decisions. The combination of Amp's code intelligence and SKILL.md skills is particularly strong because Amp can apply your skill's instructions across repository boundaries that other agents can't see.

Where Amp Code stores skills

Amp Code reads skills from two locations:

Project skills: .amp/skills/ in your repository root. These are shared with your team when committed to the repo. Every developer who clones the project gets the same skills.

Personal skills: ~/.amp/skills/ in your home directory. These apply to all your projects and aren't shared with anyone.

Each skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter (name and description) and markdown instructions. Amp reads the frontmatter at session start and loads the full skill when a task matches the description.

Skills to install right now

attack-tree-construction

by LocoLoboZ

$10

User Detection & Session Context Reviewer

by LB Creations

$14.99

ai-team-builder-kanban

by Roy Yuen

$5

Browse all skills

How to install skills in Amp Code

From Agensi: Browse agensi.io/skills, download the zip, unzip into .amp/skills/ or ~/.amp/skills/. Start a new Amp session and the skill loads automatically.

Via Agensi MCP: Add the Agensi MCP server to your Amp config. Your agent searches the full catalog and installs skills mid-conversation without leaving the terminal.

From GitHub: Clone a skill repo directly into your skills directory. No security scanning, so review the SKILL.md yourself before installing.

What makes skills different in Amp Code

Amp's Sourcegraph integration gives skills an advantage that other agents don't have. When a code review skill runs in Claude Code, it sees the files in your current project. When the same skill runs in Amp Code, it can trace references across every repository in your Sourcegraph instance.

A code review skill checking an API change in Amp can automatically find every downstream consumer of that API across your entire organization. In Claude Code, the same skill would only see the current repo. This makes Amp the strongest agent for enterprise teams with complex multi-repository architectures.

Best skills for Amp Code users

Code review: Essential for any agent. In Amp, code review skills are more powerful because they can cross-reference implementations across repositories. A review of your authentication service checks how every other service calls it.

API documentation: Amp's code intelligence indexes API shapes across your entire codebase. A documentation skill can generate docs that include every caller and usage pattern, not just the function signature.

Migration and refactoring: Amp excels at large-scale refactors because it understands the full dependency graph. A migration skill that instructs the agent to check all callers before changing an interface works best when the agent can actually see all the callers.

Architecture review: Skills that check for architectural violations (circular dependencies, layer breaches, improper access patterns) are most effective when the agent has full codebase visibility. Amp provides this.

Amp Code vs Claude Code: skills comparison

Both support the same SKILL.md format. A skill written for Claude Code works in Amp Code and vice versa. The differences are in how the agent uses the skill, not the skill itself.

Claude Code has the larger skills ecosystem (500+ on Agensi). Amp has better code intelligence for applying those skills across large codebases. Most developers use both: Claude Code for general tasks and Amp for cross-repository work.

For a detailed comparison, read Amp Code vs Claude Code vs Cursor.