Introducing DatoCMS Agent Skills
Quick Links:
Documentation and installation instructions to get up and running
Open source on GitHub so you can inspect every skill, contribute, or fork
If you've ever asked Claude to help you build something with DatoCMS and watched it confidently hallucinate completely wrong GraphQL queries, invent API methods that never existed, or just generally YOLO something into production, then this is for you.
The problem isn't the model. It's context. Your agent doesn't always know how DatoCMS works, what our conventions are, or how our pieces fit together. It knows enough to sound confident, which is arguably worse than knowing nothing.
The setup you probably already have
Story time. You've got VS Code open with a terminal running and Claude or Cursor is somewhere doing their thing. You're building something with Dato, and you want your LLM to actually do something useful rather than confidently make sh*t up.
That setup is exactly what Skills are built for. And it pairs naturally with the DatoCMS CLI, which just landed a HUGE batch of changes that make the two feel like they were designed to be together because in so many ways, they were.
In a nutshell.
The CLI can now run TypeScript scripts directly against your project via datocms cma:script. In stdin mode, there are no imports, no boilerplate, just top-level await with client and Schema available as globals, and full typechecking before anything touches the API. This mode was explicitly built for agentic workflows: your agent writes the script, pipes it to the CLI, and the type system catches wrong payload shapes before they execute.
datocms schema:inspect lets your agent examine models, fields, and relationships without opening the UI, and pass a filter or omit it to walk the whole project. datocms cma:docs now shows TypeScript signatures alongside the docs in the terminal, with flags to drill into type definitions without leaving your editor context.
But we're not here for that, we're here for skills. Skills know all of this. When your agent is working on a migration, querying structured text, or scaffolding a plugin, it's not guessing at the right patterns, it has the exact everything it needs for exactly this environment.
Introducing datocms/agent-skills
Skills are markdown-based playbooks that your agent loads on demand. Each one covers a specific area of DatoCMS work with the kind of depth that lets your agent get things right on the first attempt: the right API shapes, the right patterns, the right conventions. You don't invoke them manually — describe a task in plain language, the agent matches it to the right skill automatically, and it has everything it needs to get to work. No prompt magic required on your end.
If you don't have a local repo open — say you're working from the web or mobile, or you're an editor managing content — check out the brand new MCP server we just launched. It's great for discrete, targeted tasks and needs zero local setup. We actually recommend it especially for your editors and content team.
Agent Skills are for developers in longer coding sessions, where the agent needs more than just API access — it needs to understand how DatoCMS realllly works, what the conventions are, how things fit together. Without that guidance, you end up with an agent that can call the API but doesn't really know what it's doing. Skills fix that. And every MCP capability is already baked in via local CLI calls, so if you're in a repo, Skills are all you need.
Here's a quick overview of what they can do:
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: filters, pagination, localization, modular content, Structured Text, responsive images, SEO metadata, typed queries with gql.tada or codegen.
Writing content & automation — programmatic CMA scripts: record CRUD, bulk imports/exports, asset uploads, environment forks and promotions, webhooks, roles and tokens, scheduled publishing, audit logs.
CLI workflows — migrations, schema-type generation, typed CMA scripts, environment operations, CI/CD pipelines, WordPress/Contentful imports.
Frontend integrations — draft mode, Web Previews, Visual Editing, Content Link overlays, real-time preview subscriptions, cache-tag invalidation, SEO/sitemap wiring across Next.js App Router, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, plus
react-datocms,vue-datocms,@datocms/svelte, and@datocms/astro.One-shot setup — bootstraps multi-step flows like "set up draft mode and visual editing" or "wire up migrations" in a single command, queueing prerequisites automatically.
Plugin development — create a brand-new plugin from scratch with the Vite/React structure, picking the initial surfaces (field extensions, config screens, sidebars, pages, asset sources).
Since skills hand off tasks to each other like besties, the default is that all skills will be installed together.
Wait. You're just going to mention MCP as a BTW?
Fair question, and worth answering properly. The full details are in the dedicated post.
The short version: MCP and Skills aren't competing — they cover different people and different kinds of work.
MCP works from any interface — browser, mobile, chat apps — with zero local setup. It's great for discrete content operations: small schema tweaks, adding translations, updating a batch of records, anything where you know what you want and just need the agent to execute it. Your content team can use it. Your PM can use it. Your cat can use it. You can use it too, for quick things.
Skills are for developers with a repo open. Longer coding sessions where the agent needs more than API access — it needs to understand how DatoCMS actually works, what the conventions are, and how the pieces fit together within your codebase. The CLI changes above are a good illustration: cma:script, schema:inspect, cma:docs are powerful primitives, but an agent without context will use them wrong. Skills give it that context. And every MCP capability is already built in via local CLI calls, so there's nothing to miss.
If you're shipping code, install Skills and skip the MCP server.
Getting Started
For Claude Code, install via the marketplace for auto-updates and namespaced invocation:
/plugin marketplace add datocms/agent-skills/plugin install datocms@datocms-skillsSame for Codex:
codex plugin marketplace add datocms/agent-skillsFor all the others, use the universal npx installer:
npx skills add datocms/agent-skillsCheck out the docs and installation guide to get started with your tooling preference.
The whole thing is open source at github.com/datocms/agent-skills. Worth checking out really quickly before granting an agent access to a sensitive repo.
Please help us improve!
Both, Skills, and the new MCP, are in beta. If something breaks or behaves unexpectedly, the feedback links in the docs are the right place to shout. And we really can't stress this enough - we'd LOVE your feedback when using Skills and the MCP - the good, the bad, and especially the ugly.
