Prompts, skills, templates, and registries

Manage reusable prompt content in Happier, attach it to agents and profiles, and install or export it to provider-native locations on your machines.

Happier groups reusable AI instructions into one product area with a single canonical library and several ways to apply or export what you save there.

From a user perspective, there are five related pieces:

Library — your synced prompt docs and skill bundles
Templates — reusable slash shortcuts that insert saved prompts
System prompt additions — ordered instructions attached to coding, voice, and profile surfaces
External assets — prompts/skills that exist on a machine or inside a project
Registries — installable skill catalogs such as skills.sh or Git sources

The core rule is:

Happier library is the source of truth
external files are optional imports, installs, and exports
Happier tracks explicit links so it can detect drift instead of silently overwriting files

The library

Open Settings → Prompts & Skills to manage your reusable content.

The library currently supports two item types:

Prompts — markdown text blocks
Skills — a SKILL.md bundle, optionally with supporting files

Use prompts when you want plain reusable instructions or templates. Use skills when you want a portable bundle that should export as a real skill directory.

Prompts

Prompts are best for:

reusable instructions you want to insert into the composer
reusable system prompt additions
profile-specific or agent-specific guidance
personal prompt snippets that should sync across devices

Each prompt can have:

a title
markdown content
an optional folder
optional tags

Skills

Skills are best for:

reusable task instructions that should travel as a real skill bundle
prompt content that needs supporting files such as templates or reference snippets
assets you want to install into .agents/skills, .claude/skills, .opencode/skills, or other provider-specific locations

Each skill can have:

a title
SKILL.md content
supporting files stored inside the same bundle
an optional folder
optional tags

Supporting files are useful for:

templates referenced from SKILL.md
additional markdown instructions
configuration snippets
other exported bundle files

Folders and tags

Use Folders when you want lightweight organization without duplicating prompts.

Recommended patterns:

one folder per team or workstream
one folder per provider or backend setup
one folder for templates vs another for system additions

Tags are lighter-weight than folders and work well for:

coding
voice
review
research
profile

Templates (slash commands inside Happier)

Templates are Happier-native slash shortcuts built from saved prompts.

Open Settings → Prompts & Skills → Templates to create them.

Each template maps:

a slash token such as /review or /ship-check
to a target prompt from your library
with a behavior:
- Insert
- Insert and send

Use templates when you want a fast reusable composer shortcut without turning the prompt into a system rule.

Template behavior

When you type a saved token in the composer:

Happier resolves the linked prompt
inserts the prompt content into the composer
optionally sends immediately if the template is configured that way

Happier blocks collisions with built-in action commands, so a template token cannot silently override a core slash action.

System prompt additions

This is the user-facing name for what the implementation internally stores as ordered prompt stacks.

Open:

Settings → Prompts & Skills → System prompt additions

You can attach prompts or skills to:

the Coding agent
the Voice agent
any saved Profile

How it works

System prompt additions are:

ordered
individually enabled or disabled
reusable across multiple surfaces

Happier resolves them into the session’s append/system prompt in a shared way across UI and CLI.

That means:

starting a session from the app and from the CLI uses the same prompt-building logic
profile-linked additions and surface-linked additions compose consistently

Recommended usage

Use coding additions for:

code-review rules
repo-specific style constraints
output format expectations

Use voice additions for:

shorter conversational style
speech-friendly formatting
dictation or accessibility preferences

Use profile additions for:

environment- or endpoint-specific rules
reusable “work profile” or “research profile” instructions

External assets

Open Settings → Prompts & Skills → External Assets when you want to inspect or manage prompt-related files that live on a real machine.

This screen is machine-aware and, for project-scoped assets, workspace-aware.

Examples include:

portable Agent skills (.agents/skills)
provider-native skill locations such as .claude/skills or .opencode/skills
provider-native command locations such as .claude/commands

What you can do there

discover supported external assets on a selected machine
inspect what Happier can read from that machine or project
import external assets into the library

What “managed by Happier” means

When you export or install a library item to a machine target, Happier stores an explicit external link.

That link records:

which library item it came from
which machine and scope it targets
the external reference/path identity
digests used for drift detection

This is what lets Happier show whether an external copy is still in sync.

Exporting library items to machines

Prompts and skills can be exported from their editor screens to external targets.

Use this when you want:

a real provider-native file on disk
a real skill directory in a repo
compatibility with other tools that read those files directly

Install method: copy vs symlink

For bundle-based targets such as skills, Happier supports:

Copy — writes an independent copy into the selected target
Symlink — writes a Happier-managed materialized copy and links the target to it

Use symlink when you want easier updates and a single managed copy per install target. Use copy when you need a completely standalone on-disk copy.

Drift safety

Happier does not silently overwrite changed external assets.

If a linked external file or directory changes on disk after export:

Happier detects the digest mismatch
export, install, or delete actions fail with a conflict instead of overwriting

This is deliberate. The library and the machine copy are related, but Happier still treats local disk mutations as real changes that need review.

Registries

Open Settings → Prompts & Skills → Registries to browse installable skill catalogs.

Current registry concepts:

built-in skills.sh
configurable Git sources
adapter-driven future registry types

`skills.sh`

Happier integrates with the actual public skills.sh registry surface instead of only scanning the CLI repo.

In practice:

browsing the built-in skills.sh source shows real public skills
searching uses the upstream skills.sh search API
opening an item shows details before you import or install it

Git sources

Git sources let you add:

a repository URL, or
a local checkout path

Happier scans those sources for skill bundles and exposes them through the same registry UI as built-in sources.

This is useful for:

private team skill repos
local experiments
curated internal catalogs

Import vs install vs export

These terms mean different things in Happier:

Import

Bring something into the Happier library.

Examples:

import a skill from skills.sh
import an existing .agents/skills/foo directory from a machine

Install

Take a registry item, import it into the library, and also install it to a selected external machine target.

Result:

synced library item
external machine install
explicit external link recorded by Happier

Export

Take an existing library item and write it to an external machine target.

Result:

external machine copy or install created from a library item you already had

Provider support

Happier keeps the library model provider-agnostic, but external asset support depends on each provider’s file conventions.

Current examples include:

Agent skills (.agents) — portable skill standard
Claude — commands and skills where supported by the local file layout
OpenCode — commands and skills where supported by the local file layout
Gemini — skill locations where supported
Copilot — skill locations where supported

The library itself still works even when a provider has no stable external asset format.

Common workflows

Build a reusable coding instruction

Create a Prompt
Put it in a folder if useful
Add it to Coding agent system prompt additions
Optionally attach it to a specific Profile

Create a reusable slash shortcut

Create a Prompt
Open Templates
Map a token like /review to that prompt
Use Insert or Insert and send

Install a skill from `skills.sh`

Open Registries
Select skills.sh
Search or browse
Open item details
Choose:
- Import to library only, or
- Install to import + install on a machine target

Export a skill to a project

Open the skill in the library
Choose Manage external assets
Pick machine, scope, target type, and install method
Confirm the preview

Templates affect what you insert or send in the composer
System prompt additions affect the session’s system/append prompt

Skills are bundles, not just text

If you need supporting files, use a skill bundle rather than a plain prompt.