Why OpenAI Deprecated the openai/skills Repository

Why the Codex skills catalog disappeared

Over the second half of 2025, OpenAI's open-source repository for Codex, openai/skills, was officially marked as deprecated — news that spread through the developer community. At its peak the repo acted as the Agent Skills catalog that agents in the Codex CLI could automatically fetch and use, and it had become quite influential, earning 25.7k stars and 1.7k forks on GitHub.

What the repository was

The core concept was Skills = a folder-scoped collection of commands, scripts, and resources. Inside Codex, users could install whichever skill they wanted with a single $skill-installer command, and skills were organized into .system, .curated, and .experimental directories that distinguished built-in, curated, and experimental offerings.

Some of the most-used skills were GitHub workflow and planning/execution helpers such as gh-address-comments, create-plan, and gh-fix-ci. The project gained attention because teams and individuals could write the workflows they used frequently in SKILL.md form once, and Codex would call them automatically.

What deprecated means here

The core of the deprecation notice at the top of the README is the directive to "use the openai/plugins repository from now on." The existing skills repository is no longer the base distribution point for new skills; it remains only as a reference catalog.

The last commit landed on June 24, 2026 (about three months ago), and the repository description now reads "Plugins directory for skills and apps." In other words, instead of sending PRs to the old skills repository as before, skill creators should move their targets over to the openai/plugins repository and ship skills as skill-only plugins — that plugin format is now the officially supported path.

Why the structure changed

From OpenAI's perspective, integrating Skills into the plugin ecosystem looks far more scalable than managing them as a standalone repository. A plugin is more than a plain prompt command — it can cover permission scopes, configuration UI, and distribution packaging, which suits team-level distribution and enterprise adoption.

In practice, Codex's skills directory is still organized into ~/.codex/skills/.system, .curated, and .experimental. That structure was kept, and only the distribution repository moved over to plugins. From an existing user's standpoint, already-installed skills don't stop working — but to find or propose new skills going forward, you need to check the new repository.

The project at a glance

So where does that leave you?

If you want to build a custom skill for Codex today, the recommended path is to keep using the existing SKILL.md format while distributing through the plugins repository, or simply drop the skill directly into your local ~/.codex/skills/. The openai/skills repository carries real historical weight and still works well as reference material for learning how skills are structured and authored — but it is worth remembering that for new projects it is a deprecated repository.

Reference links

• openai/skills repository
• openai/plugins repository
• Codex plugin authoring guide
• Agent Skills open standard