A questionable place to keep your best Codex skills.
Skill Dumpster is a native macOS app for backing up, browsing, disabling, restoring, and generally rummaging through your Codex skills.
Codex skills are powerful little folders of agent behavior. They often include a SKILL.md file plus scripts, references, templates, assets, and helper agents. That makes them worth backing up carefully. Skill Dumpster treats skills as whole bundles, not just Markdown files, and gives you a safer way to snapshot and recover them without surprise overwrites.
- Scans your local Codex skills folder, usually
~/.codex/skills. - Shows personal, disabled, and read-only system skills in one native Mac window.
- Reads each skill's
SKILL.mdname and description. - Creates manual snapshot backups in iCloud Drive.
- Stores snapshots as full skill folders, including
agents,assets,references,scripts, and templates. - Shows restore previews before changing local skills.
- Creates a safety snapshot before restore.
- Lets you toss a skill into
_disabledand recover it later. - Skips obvious junk and risky files such as
.DS_Store,.git,node_modules,.env, private keys, and credentials.
The tone is silly. The restore behavior is not.
Download the latest release from GitHub:
Recommended download:
The app is Developer ID signed, but not notarized yet. macOS may require you to approve the app the first time you open it.
By default, Skill Dumpster reads from:
~/.codex/skills
And writes snapshots to:
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Skill Dumpster
Each backup creates a timestamped folder like:
Skill Dumpster/snapshots/20260530-170000Z-your-mac-a1b2c3d4/
Inside each snapshot:
manifest.json
skills/
reports/dumpster-report.json
The manifest records which skills were backed up, their hashes, file counts, sizes, skipped files, source path, machine name, and snapshot metadata.
Skill Dumpster is intentionally conservative:
- It shows a diff preview before restore.
- It restores only selected added or modified skills.
- It creates a pre-restore safety snapshot first.
- It does not delete local skills that are missing from a snapshot.
- It treats
.systemskills as read-only and excludes them from backup/restore.
In other words: rummage freely, but no silent dumpster fires.
Requirements:
- macOS 14 or newer
- Swift 6 toolchain
- Xcode or Apple Command Line Tools
Run the app:
swift run SkillDumpsterRun checks:
Scripts/test.shScripts/test.sh runs the SwiftPM test target and a small dependency-free core test runner. The runner is included because some Command Line Tools installs do not report Swift Testing discovery output reliably.
Scripts/build-release.shRelease artifacts are written to build/release/:
SkillDumpster-<version>.zipSkillDumpster-<version>.dmgSHA256SUMS.txt
The release script signs with this identity by default:
Developer ID Application: NICHOLAS NABIL HAMZE (3J8H48TP7P)
Override it with:
SIGNING_IDENTITY="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)" Scripts/build-release.shCI can exercise release packaging without a Developer ID certificate:
SKIP_SIGNING=1 Scripts/build-release.shTo notarize and staple the zip and DMG, set NOTARY_PROFILE to a keychain profile:
NOTARY_PROFILE="notary-profile-name" Scripts/build-release.shNotarization credentials are intentionally not stored in this repository.
Sources/SkillDumpster/ SwiftUI app
Sources/SkillDumpsterCore/ scanning, snapshots, diffs, restore, actions
Tests/ Swift tests and local core test runner
Resources/ app icon source and .icns bundle
Scripts/ test and release helpers
Skill Dumpster is an early personal-tool release. It is useful today for manual backups and cautious restores, but it is not a full sync daemon yet.
Planned directions:
- Better conflict UI
- Snapshot pruning
- More skill validation
- Optional automatic backup reminders
- In-app release/update checks
No license has been selected yet.