[ENHANCEMENT] Support .agents/skills folder

[alefteris]

Problem (one or two sentences)

Users moving to Roo Code or from Roo Code need to adjust the paths there they have saved their skills, for them to be used.

Context (who is affected and when)

Roo Code is currently using the .roo/skills/ and ~/.roo/skills/ paths to lookup the skills. When a user is switching from a different agent tool (ex. codex, copilot, etc) their skills cannot be used right away because they are stored in unsupported paths.

Desired behavior (conceptual, not technical)

In addition to .roo/skills/, also consider using .agents/skills/. Or in general, support .agents/ as a place for agent customization files.

For global skills the additional paths should be ~/.agents/skills/. It would be nice also to support the XDG location ~/.config/agents/skills/ for Linux.

A lot of other agent tools have already adopted those paths. It will help with onboarding users of other tools to Roo Code and vice versa, without requiring users to create symlinks or to move files around.

See agentskills/agentskills#15

Constraints / preferences (optional)

No response

Request checklist

• I've searched existing Issues and Discussions for duplicates
• This describes a specific problem with clear context and impact

Roo Code Task Links (optional)

No response

Acceptance criteria (optional)

No response

Proposed approach (optional)

No response

Trade-offs / risks (optional)

No response

[roomote]

I've analyzed this issue and here's what I found:

Already implemented in the codebase:

• Project-local .agents/skills/ and .agents/skills-{mode}/ directories are already scanned for skills
• Global ~/.agents/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills-{mode}/ directories are already scanned
• Priority ordering is correct: .roo/skills/ takes precedence over .agents/skills/ at the same level

Remaining gap from this issue:
The XDG-compliant location ~/.config/agents/skills/ (mentioned for Linux) is not yet supported.

Proposed implementation plan:

1. Add a getXdgAgentsDirectory() function in src/services/roo-config/index.ts that returns:

   • On Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/agents (defaults to ~/.config/agents if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset)
   • On macOS: ~/.config/agents (XDG is increasingly common on macOS too)
   • On Windows: skip XDG (Windows uses %USERPROFILE%\.agents which is already covered)

2. Update SkillsManager.getSkillsDirectories() in src/services/skills/SkillsManager.ts to include the XDG agents directory in the scan order with lowest global priority:

   • XDG ~/.config/agents/skills (lowest priority)
   • ~/.agents/skills (medium priority)
   • ~/.roo/skills (highest priority)

3. Update SkillsManager.setupFileWatchers() to also watch the XDG agents skills directory.

4. Add corresponding tests in src/services/roo-config/__tests__/index.spec.ts and src/services/skills/__tests__/SkillsManager.spec.ts.

This approach maintains backward compatibility and follows the priority principle that more specific locations (.roo) override more general ones (.agents), which in turn override the broadest XDG location.

Please mention @roomote in a comment saying that you approve this plan, and I'll proceed with the implementation.

[alefteris]

Seems to be implemented already in the 3.47.2 release (by PR #11181) but it's undocumented in the skills docs

[0xMink]

@roomote can you access the skills docs?

[roomote]

Yes, I can access the skills docs in the RooCodeInc/Roo-Code-Docs repo. The current docs at docs/features/skills.mdx only reference .roo/skills/ paths and don't mention the .agents/skills/ paths that are already implemented in the codebase.

I'll open a PR against Roo-Code-Docs to update the skills documentation to cover:

• .agents/skills/ as an alternative project-level location
• ~/.agents/skills/ as an alternative global location
• .agents/skills-{mode}/ and ~/.agents/skills-{mode}/ for mode-specific variants
• The priority ordering (.roo/ overrides .agents/ at the same level)

I'll share the PR link here when it's ready.

[roomote]

Opened a docs PR to address the undocumented .agents/skills/ paths: RooCodeInc/Roo-Code-Docs#534

The PR updates docs/features/skills.mdx to document:

• .agents/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/ as alternative skill locations shared across AI tools
• Mode-specific variants (.agents/skills-{mode}/)
• The full override priority chain (.roo/ > .agents/ at each level)
• A cross-tool compatibility tip

Feedback welcome!