ibmi-agent-skills

IBM i Agent Skills

Agent skills for AI coding assistants to work with IBM i systems. 24 skills covering all IBM i SQL Service categories with 215+ pre-built tools, driven by the ibmi CLI.

What are Agent Skills?

Agents are increasingly capable, but often don't have the context they need to do real work reliably. Skills solve this by giving agents access to procedural knowledge and company, team, and user-specific context they can load on demand. Agents with access to a set of skills can extend their capabilities based on the task they're working on.

Installation

Skills are organized into plugins so you can install only what you need:

Plugin	Skills	Tools	Audience
ibmi-core	1 (ibmi)	3	Everyone — CLI, text-to-SQL, schema discovery, agent scripting
ibmi-database	5	51	DBAs, SQL developers
ibmi-system	18	161	Sysadmins, operators, security, DevOps
ibmi-all	24	219+	Install everything

Option 1: Claude Code Plugin Marketplace

/plugin marketplace add ajshedivy/ibmi-agent-skills

# Install by role:
/plugin install ibmi-core@ibmi-agent-skills          # Start here
/plugin install ibmi-database@ibmi-agent-skills       # For DBAs
/plugin install ibmi-system@ibmi-agent-skills          # For sysadmins

# Or install everything:
/plugin install ibmi-all@ibmi-agent-skills

Option 2: npx skills (Multi-Agent)

Install skills using npx skills. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and 40+ other agents.

# Install from GitHub
npx skills add ajshedivy/ibmi-agent-skills

# Or clone and install locally
git clone https://github.com/ajshedivy/ibmi-agent-skills.git
cd ibmi-agent-skills
npx skills add ./skills --list           # List available skills
npx skills add ./skills/ibmi             # Core skill (start here)
npx skills add ./skills                  # Install all skills

Options

Option	Description
-g, --global	Install to user directory instead of project
-a, --agent <agents...>	Target specific agents (e.g., claude-code, cursor)
-s, --skill <skills...>	Install specific skills by name
-l, --list	List available skills without installing
-y, --yes	Skip all confirmation prompts
--all	Install all skills to all agents without prompts

Examples

# Install to Claude Code only
npx skills add ./skills -a claude-code

# Install globally (available across all projects)
npx skills add ./skills -g

# Non-interactive installation
npx skills add ./skills -g -a claude-code -y --all

Prerequisites

The only dependency is the ibmi CLI, which handles SQL execution, schema discovery, DDL generation, and YAML tool invocation. All skills in this repo are built on it.

Install the CLI

# Recommended — daily use
npm i -g @ibm/ibmi-cli

# Or one-shot via npx (no install)
npx -y @ibm/ibmi-cli --help

The ibmi skill runs a preflight check before each session — if the CLI is missing, it will walk you through the install. Power users can just install it up-front with the command above.

Add a system connection

The CLI keeps system connections in its own config. Add one, test it, and set it as the default:

# Add a system (you'll be prompted for the password; re-run with --password to pipe non-interactively)
ibmi system add dev \
  --host your-ibmi-host.example.com \
  --user YOURUSER \
  --port 8076

# Make it the default so other commands don't need --system
ibmi system default dev

# Verify connectivity
ibmi system test dev

# Inspect what's configured
ibmi system list
ibmi config show            # shows effective config and which file each value came from

Need multiple systems? Just add more and target them per-command with --system:

ibmi system add prod --host prod.example.com --user YOURUSER --port 8076
ibmi --system prod sql "SELECT 1 FROM SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1"

For CI or ephemeral environments, set credentials via environment variables instead of the config file:

export DB2i_HOST=your-ibmi-host.example.com
export DB2i_USER=YOURUSER
export DB2i_PASS=your-password
ibmi sql "SELECT 1 FROM SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1"

Smoke test

# Should print a few schemas
ibmi schemas --limit 5

# Run a skill tool directly (after installing a plugin or cloning)
ibmi tool list_active_jobs \
  --tools ./skills/work-management/tools/ \
  --limit 5

Further docs: CLI commands · agent integration · full docs index.

Available Skills

Core (ibmi-core plugin)