👉 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 guided 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 and optional MCP

Skills guide the agent's workflow; the DatoCMS MCP server connects it to a live project. They can work together:

• Standalone skills — content modeling, application code, migrations, plugin development, and live operations through the CLI or CMA client. Installing skills does not require or install MCP.
• Standalone MCP — connected project access without installing these skills. The server supplies its own tools and runtime guidance.
• Skills with current remote MCP — content modeling and CMA guidance can help an agent inspect or update a project through an already connected server, including in chat clients without a local development workspace.

Use the requested execution route. Otherwise, keep a usable CLI workflow; current remote MCP is an optional route for live operations. Migrations, repo configuration, and application code still need their local workflows. See installation and compatibility.

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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. They trigger automatically based on your prompt.

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.
• Structured Text — understand, build, edit, validate, and convert DAST documents; import Markdown/HTML, preserve embedded content during edits, and export to other formats.
• 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.
• Guided setup (datocms-setup) — inspects the project, asks only what it can't infer, proposes a plan with prerequisites in order, and changes nothing until you confirm; then builds it through the other skills.
• Feedback — when a skills or MCP workflow is stuck, drafts a sanitized report and opens a prefilled DatoCMS support form.

Extending the DatoCMS dashboard

• Plugin development — create, patch, extend, or restyle DatoCMS plugins with SDK hooks, Vite/React, browser CMA flows, permissions, and DatoCMS UI patterns.

For the full list of skill names and which skill owns each setup concern 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: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 and Claude Desktop chat

For editorial work, upload datocms-content-modeling.zip for schema advice and datocms-cma.zip for content operations. Connect the current remote MCP server separately when live project access is needed. Modeling advice alone requires no connection; local development workflows require the relevant workspace and tools.

Upload and enable the .zip files via Customize → Skills in Claude. A local Claude Code skill install does not itself enable them in chat. The full set of pre-built zips lives in zips/.

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Usage

Automatic skills

You don't need to invoke skills by name — 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"
• "Convert this Markdown article into Structured Text"
• "Rewrite this DAST paragraph while preserving its embedded blocks"
• "Validate this Structured Text document"
• "Make my plugin config screen match the DatoCMS style"
• "Create a new DatoCMS plugin from scratch"

Guided setup

datocms-setup walks you through multi-part setup (previews and visual editing, caching, SEO, search, migrations and releases, webhooks, imports, or a new site from a starter). It inspects the repo, asks only what it can't infer, and shows a plan: files, packages, env vars, and every change to your DatoCMS project listed separately. Nothing changes until you agree, and live project writes need your approval. Prerequisites (e.g. draft mode before Web Previews) are ordered in the plan. The code itself comes from the other skills.

It activates on setup requests; to call it directly:

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

Phrase the prompt as the outcome you want.

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

Every setup run 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.

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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 and setup ownership map
• 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
• dev/e2e/README.md — end-to-end and regression evaluation harness

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Development

Contributors need Node 24+ with npm, Python 3, and git. The plugins ship skills/ and the manifests; all Node tooling lives in dev/, so plugin installs never pull its dependencies. From the repo root:

npm ci --prefix dev                           # dev dependencies and the pre-commit hook
python3 evals/scripts/validate_skill_repo.py  # repo invariants (the hook runs this too)
npm --prefix dev run typecheck
npm --prefix dev run format:check
npm --prefix dev test                         # all offline tests

Tests never run automatically; run them when you need them. The pre-commit hook formats staged Markdown, rebuilds the zips/ of changed skills, and runs the validator. Trigger evals and native agent sessions are paid, need an authenticated claude or codex CLI, and run only on request; see evals/README.md and dev/e2e/README.md. Keep package.json and lockfiles out of the repo root: Claude Code would install them for every plugin user, and the validator rejects them.

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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 guide DatoCMS workflows in compatible assistants. Use local CLI and code workflows for development, or pair content workflows with the optional MCP Server for connected project access.

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.