Cursor doesn't follow symlinks to discover skills

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

I symlinked a skill folder to ~/.cursor/skills but the SKILL.md inside this directory is not discovered by Cursor. It’s possibly a similar bug that Codex CLI had recently: Allow symlinked Skill folders/files · Issue #8369 · openai/codex · GitHub

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create a some-skill/SKILL.md somewhere on your disk
  2. Symlink this some-skill directory to ~/.cursor/skills
  3. See if Cursor picks it up in Cursor Settings / Skills

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.4.21
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: dc8361355d709f306d5159635a677a571b277bc0
Date: 2026-01-22T16:57:59.675Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.2.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

Bug Report: Skills in Symlinked Directories Not Detected After Cursor Restart
Third party skills disappearing
Third party skills disappearing
4

Hey @borekb!

Thanks for reporting this. This is a known issue on our side (and also affects Rules), and we have a ticket open for this already. I’ve linked your report to it.

1 Like
Global symlinked skills are not discovered by cursor
5

I just tested a symlink from <repo-root>/.cursor/skills to <repo-root>/.codex/skills, and it seemed to work fine in v2.4.21. Does this issue only affect symlinks in the home directory skills folder?

6

The other reported issue was for home directory rules, so it sounds like that’s the case!

7

Describe the Bug

Basically, I’m installing new skills using Vercel skills.sh and showing them once to be used. After closing and reopening Cursor, the skills aren’t available to be used

Steps to Reproduce

Install a skill, then close and reopen your cursor. The skill is not there.

Expected Behavior

skills working fine

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

image.png
image.png1894×582 112 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.4.21 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: dc8361355d709f306d5159635a677a571b277bc0
Date: 2026-01-22T16:57:59.675Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Nightly
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.2.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue