Skillry
Skillry sells Agent Skills: folders of instructions, templates and scripts that an AI agent loads when a task needs them. Anthropic introduced the format for Claude on 16 October 2025 and published it as an open standard on 18 December 2025. Skillry's Skills are for coding agents, AI programs such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor that read and write files on the user's own computer. Each Skill makes one kind of visual work in one designed style: a landing page, a testimonial section, a slide deck, a set of article illustrations or a short launch video. Each Skill page shows that output before the buyer installs it. On 15 October 2026 the site's sitemap listed 404 Skills.
The founder is shown on TrustMRR as Yihui, from China, with a team of one and a linked X account of 62,545 followers. The founding date there is 8 August 2026, and the site's first blog post is dated 30 August. Almost nothing sold until 28 September 2026. TrustMRR, a site that reads a startup's revenue directly from its payment provider, shows US$7,715 from 28 September to 15 October. On 15 October it showed US$7,747 in the last 30 days, US$7,855 in total, 264 active subscriptions and MRR (monthly recurring revenue: what the active subscriptions bring in each month) of US$2,600.
The revenue numbers are grade A, read by TrustMRR from Skillry's own Stripe account. They cover only 18 days of real sales. Daily revenue stayed near US$430 a day, with no single large spike, but it did not grow. Only about one third of the 30-day revenue is MRR; the rest came from payments that do not repeat each month or from subscriptions that ended. The page also shows what the AI companies give away for free, and what happened to earlier companies that sold a curated layer on top of someone else's platform.

The numbers, graded
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue in the last 30 days, to 15 October 2026 | US$7,747 | A | TrustMRR, read from Skillry's Stripe account through an API key, last synced 15 October 2026. Up 7,073.3% on the 30 days before, when sales had barely started. | [1] |
| Total revenue since founding | US$7,855 | A | TrustMRR. The 3-month, 6-month and 12-month figures are the same, because the business is younger than three months. | [1] |
| Revenue by month | August 2026 US$27, September US$1,608, 1 to 15 October US$6,220 | A | TrustMRR monthly timeline. October is half a month. | [1] |
| Monthly recurring revenue (MRR), 15 October 2026 | US$2,600, from 264 active subscriptions | A | TrustMRR metric snapshot. | [1] |
| MRR as a share of the 30-day revenue | 33.6% | calc | Calculated: US$2,600 / US$7,747. The other US$5,147 does not come back each month by itself: it is yearly plans paid in advance, US$169 lifetime licenses, US$4.99 single Skills, or subscriptions that ended. TrustMRR does not show the split. | [1, 2, 8] |
| Daily revenue from 28 September to 14 October 2026 | US$7,352 in 17 days, a mean of US$432 a day | calc | Calculated from TrustMRR's daily table. Lowest day US$125 (6 October), highest US$806 (30 September). The highest day is 10.4% of the 30-day total, so the figure is not one day's spike. | [1] |
| First and second week of sales | US$3,280, then US$2,878 | calc | Calculated from TrustMRR's daily table: 28 September to 4 October, then 5 to 11 October, a fall of 12.3%. The three full days 12 to 14 October averaged US$398 a day, 3.2% below the second week. The level held but did not grow. | [1] |
| Revenue before 28 September 2026 | about US$140 in total | calc | Calculated: all-time US$7,855 minus the US$7,715 that the daily table shows from 28 September to 15 October. 15 October was a partial day at the sync. | [1] |
| 30-day revenue at a yearly rate | US$92,964 | calc | Calculated: US$7,747 x 12. The recurring part alone, MRR x 12, is US$31,200. The 30 days include only 18 days of sales. | [1] |
| Prices, 15 October 2026 | Premium US$9.99 a month or US$79 a year, Founding Lifetime US$169 one-time, single Skills US$4.99, some Skills free | C | Company pricing page and Skill pages. All payments are non-refundable. | [2, 8, 10] |
| Prices on 30 September 2026 | the same three plans at the same prices | C | The earliest Wayback Machine capture of the pricing page, two days after sales began. It already said "1,000+ people supporting us". | [13] |
| Skills in the catalog, 15 October 2026 | 404 Skill pages | calc | Calculated: counted with python3 in the sitemap downloaded on 15 October 2026. The home page says "400+ Skills so far". 404 Skills in the 68 days since the founding date is about 5.9 a day. | [7, 3] |
| Skills by kind of output | about 214 image and other, 102 web, 62 slide and 26 video Skills | calc | Calculated: sorted by words in each Skill's address (deck, landing, hero, hyperframes and others), so the split is approximate. 48 Skills make link-preview images in the style of a known brand such as Stripe, Notion or Airbnb. | [7] |
| Agents with install guides | 32 | calc | Calculated: counted in the sitemap. They include Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf and Kiro. | [7] |
| Team | 1 person | C | Founder-written TrustMRR profile. The site speaks of "our own team" and "the Skillry team" but names nobody. | [1, 3] |
| Outside funding | none reported | C | No source mentions an investor. TrustMRR shows a 100% profit margin for the last 30 days, which only means that no costs were connected to it. | [1] |
| Operating company | not named | C | The terms of service and the privacy policy name no company. The terms speak of "Skillry and its operators" and give the address support@skillry.dev. | [4, 17] |
| Payment processor | Stripe, Skillry's own account | A | TrustMRR: verified source Stripe (API key), merchant of record: No. The terms also name Stripe as the processor. | [1, 4] |
| Affiliate commission | 40% of referred payments for the first 12 months | C | Company affiliate page. | [11] |
| Founder's X audience | 62,545 followers | C | TrustMRR profile, for the X account linked to the founder shown as Yihui. No permitted source shows how many buyers came from it. | [1] |
| Time from the founding date to the headline figure | 68 days | calc | Calculated: 8 August to 15 October 2026, about 2.2 months. | [1] |
How to read this table: a grade A value is read by TrustMRR directly from Skillry's Stripe account. A grade C value is the founder's own text on TrustMRR or the company's own pages. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it or from the downloaded pages.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Skills | 0 | 0 | account sign-in |
| Single paid Skill | 4.99 one-time | one Skill | |
| Premium, monthly | 9.99 | all Premium Skills | |
| Premium, yearly | 6.58 | US$79 a year; all Premium Skills | |
| Founding Lifetime | 169 one-time | all Premium Skills, no renewal |
Premium gives every paid Skill, updates and new Skills while access lasts. The Founding Lifetime price "increases as the library grows". A paid Skill can also be bought alone for US$4.99, and free Skills need only an account. All payments are non-refundable. Image and video Skills may need the buyer's own API key for an outside model provider such as FAL, which bills per use. The yearly price per month was calculated: US$79 / 12.
The timeline
From Anthropic's new Skill format in October 2025 to a paid Skill library with US$7,747 in 30 days, 68 days after its founding date. Each entry carries its grade.
- 9 October 2025CAnthropic releases plugins for Claude Code and lets anyone host a plugin marketplace, a curated collection that other developers install from. [15]
- 16 October 2025CAnthropic introduces Agent Skills: folders of instructions, scripts and resources that Claude loads when a task needs them, with its own Skills for Excel, PowerPoint, Word and PDF files. [14]
- 18 December 2025CAnthropic adds a directory of partner-built Skills and publishes Agent Skills as an open standard for use across platforms. [14]
- 8 August 2026CFounding date on the TrustMRR profile. The founder, shown as Yihui, gives China as the country and a team of one. [1]
- 12 August 2026CDate of the terms of service: Skills are sold as downloadable packages with a SKILL.md file, scripts and previews, paid through Stripe, with no refunds. [4]
- 30 August 2026CFirst blog post, "Introducing Skillry": a "curated marketplace of Agent Skills" for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and Cursor, with free Skills and one Premium plan. [6]
- 31 August 2026CThird-Party Notices published: portions of the catalog include or are derived from MIT-licensed open-source work by 21 named copyright holders. [5]
- August 2026AUS$27 of revenue in the first month. [1]
- 20 to 27 September 2026ASales stay small: US$4.99 to US$9.99 on four days. [1]
- 28 September 2026ASales start in earnest: US$139 that day, US$548 the next and US$806 on 30 September, the best day so far. [1]
- 30 September 2026CThe first Wayback Machine capture of the pricing page shows US$9.99 a month, US$79 a year and a US$169 Founding Lifetime license, and "1,000+ people supporting us". [13]
- 5 to 11 October 2026ASecond week of sales: US$2,878, against US$3,280 in the first week. [1]
- 15 October 2026ATrustMRR, synced from Stripe: US$7,747 in the last 30 days, US$7,855 in total, MRR of US$2,600 and 264 active subscriptions. The sitemap lists 404 Skills, with pages in nine languages. [1, 7]
Why it worked
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
Previews of real output
Each Skill page opens with a gallery of what the Skill makes, so a buyer chooses a style the way one chooses a template. The founder's TrustMRR text names this as the value: preview the real output before installing. The company describes the method: each Skill "starts as a finished piece of work we design ourselves", and then it writes "the instructions, templates and scripts that let your agent make it again".
One plan for a catalog that grows every day
Premium covers every paid Skill and every new one, and on average about six Skills a day were added since the founding date (calculated). The US$169 Founding Lifetime price "increases as the library grows", which gives a reason to buy early.
A page for each Skill, task, role and agent
The sitemap has 1,312 English pages, among them the 404 Skill pages and install guides for 32 agents, and the same pages in eight more languages, 11,808 addresses in total. Free Skills need only an account. The founder lists X, Threads, YouTube, search and content marketing as channels; no source shows which of them brought the buyers.
No model costs for the seller
Most Skills run on the buyer's own agent and its model ("Generates with Host Agent LLM"). Image and video Skills call outside models such as FAL "with your own API key, and that provider bills you per use". Skillry sells files, so a sale adds no model cost for it.
How it was built
These details come from the founder's TrustMRR profile and the company's own pages. They are grade C. [1, 4, 3, 8, 9, 5, 7]
- Frontend in React, TypeScript and Tailwind CSS; backend on Cloudflare with SQLite and Node.js; payments through Stripe. This is the founder's tech-stack list on TrustMRR.
- A Skill is a folder: a SKILL.md file with the instructions, plus scripts, references, installation instructions, previews and other supporting files. The terms say the downloaded package is the product.
- Installation by a copied install prompt, a ZIP download, or the Skillry command-line tool, which authorizes through the browser and "keeps a revocable credential in your system keychain".
- The Article Illustration Set, a paid image Skill, needs a FAL account and Node.js 20 or newer, and generates with GPT Image from OpenAI.
- Web Skills ship as source code: a component file and a runnable usage example, with colors, type and corner radius as tokens to edit in one place, and images stored locally.
- Parts of the catalog include or derive from MIT-licensed open-source work: libraries such as React, Tailwind CSS, Ant Design, Shadcnblocks and ReUI, and work by individual developers and small studios, all named on the Third-Party Notices page.
- Pages in nine languages: English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German and French.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
The dead that came before
Four companies in the Loot Drop database sold a curated or better-designed layer on top of a platform, and lost when the platform or free tools did the same job. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Iddiction
The promiseA curated app store to help people find good apps among millions.
Why it diedApple and Google improved discovery inside their own stores, and a separate curated store lost its reason to exist.
Readability
The promiseClutter-free reading of any web article.
Why it diedBrowsers added free reader modes and free extensions did the same. Few readers paid.
Xmarks
The promiseSync your bookmarks and tabs across browsers.
Why it diedChrome, Firefox and Safari built the same sync into the browser, for free.
Jobspice
The promiseGood-looking resumes for job seekers who cannot design.
Why it diedOne narrow product. LinkedIn and free tools gave job seekers the same result without paying.
What changed
Each of the four sold something that a larger platform, or a free tool, later gave away: a better way to find apps, to read articles, to sync bookmarks or to make a document look designed. Skillry has the same exposure. Anthropic, which created the Skill format, ships its own Skills for documents and slides, runs a directory of partner-built Skills, and lets anyone host a plugin marketplace. Free Skills such as Anthropic's frontend-design are easy to install, and Skillry's own guide lists them.
Two things differ. First, Skillry does not sell access to a platform but finished visual styles, hundreds of them, each shown with real output, and the platform makers do not make styles in that number. Second, the format is an open standard, and Skillry has install guides for 32 agents, so a change at one AI company does not close the store. What 18 days of sales cannot show is whether buyers keep paying after the first month.
Can one person copy it now?
The method, yes. The speed and the audience, not easily.
A Skill costs little to make: a SKILL.md file, templates and scripts. What is hard to copy is a catalog of 404 styled Skills built in 68 days, real previews for each, and a founder with 62,545 followers on X, although no source shows that the followers brought the buyers.
Where it is still open: Skills for work where design taste matters and the model makers do not compete: brand-specific styles, industry document formats, video templates, and Skills for the newer agents that appear after Claude Code and Codex.
- 1Pick one kind of output that agents make badly, for example slides or landing pages, and design finished examples first.
- 2Turn each example into a Skill: instructions, templates and scripts that let the agent make it again.
- 3Show the real output on each Skill page, and give some Skills away to anyone with an account.
- 4Sell one plan for the whole catalog, and add Skills often so that the plan keeps growing.
What to watch
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
Only 18 days of sales
Almost all revenue came between 28 September and 15 October 2026. Daily revenue held at about US$430 but did not rise: the second week was 12.3% below the first. The first monthly subscriptions renew from late October, and only then will churn, the share of buyers who stop paying, be visible.
Most of the money is not monthly recurring
MRR is US$2,600, about a third of the 30-day revenue. The rest came from yearly plans paid in advance, US$169 lifetime licenses, US$4.99 single Skills, or subscriptions that ended; none of it comes back next month, and TrustMRR does not show the split. A lifetime buyer pays once and keeps access to every future Skill.
The AI makers run their own directories
Anthropic introduced Agent Skills on 16 October 2025, with its own Skills for Excel, PowerPoint, Word and PDF files. On 18 December 2025 it added "a directory featuring partner-built skills" and published the format as an open standard. Since 9 October 2025 anyone can host a Claude Code plugin marketplace, "curated collections where other developers can discover and install plugins". A paid catalog competes with free directories, one of them run by the platform owner.
Free Skills exist for the same jobs
Skillry's own guide describes Anthropic's frontend-design Skill as "Official" and "Free", "a single SKILL.md published in Anthropic's public skills repository", and reviews UI UX Pro Max, Impeccable and Taste skill next to it. Skillry's answer is finished templates instead of design rules, but a buyer can compare them at no cost.
Parts of the catalog derive from open-source work
The Third-Party Notices say that "portions of the catalog include or are derived from" MIT-licensed software by 21 named copyright holders, from large libraries to individual developers. The MIT license allows this with credit. The home page says "Every Skill is designed, written and tested in-house", and the three Skill pages read for this story credit no outside author, so a buyer cannot see how much of a Skill is derived.
Dependence on the agents' formats
The terms say it directly: "AI agents, models, and third-party tools can change independently of us." Skills depend on how Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and the others load SKILL.md files, and image and video Skills depend on outside models billed to the buyer. Install guides for 32 agents spread this risk, and they also multiply the testing work for a team of one.
A very young business with no named company
The founder appears on TrustMRR only as Yihui, and the terms and privacy policy name no company, only "Skillry and its operators" and a support address. Payments are non-refundable, and the terms say a lifetime license "is not a promise that the Services will operate forever". The business was 68 days old at the headline figure.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- A TrustMRR markdown profile: Skillry, synced 15 October 2026Read the markdown profile. Revenue, the daily and monthly tables, MRR and subscriptions are in its Verification Sources section (Stripe, API key) and are grade A. Founder name, country, team size, founding date, pricing summary, tech stack and channels are founder-written profile text, grade C.
- C Skillry pricing page, read 15 October 2026Read in full. Source for the three plan prices, the founding-price rule and the refund rule.
- C Skillry home page, read 15 October 2026Read in full. Source for the in-house claim, the 400+ Skills count, the CLI credential and the note on FAL costs.
- C Skillry Terms of Service, dated 12 August 2026Read in full. Source for what a Skill package contains, Stripe as processor, the refund, lifetime and compatibility clauses. No company is named.
- C Skillry Third-Party Notices, dated 31 August 2026Read in full. Lists the open-source work that parts of the catalog include or derive from, with its licenses.
- C Skillry blog, 30 August 2026: Introducing SkillryRead in full. The company's first public description of the product.
- C Skillry sitemap, downloaded 15 October 2026Downloaded in full and counted with python3: 11,808 addresses, 1,312 in English, 404 Skill pages and 32 agent install guides.
- C Skillry Skill page: Article Illustration SetRead in full. A paid image Skill at US$4.99 that needs a FAL key and generates with GPT Image.
- C Skillry Skill page: Masonry Testimonial WallRead in full. A free web Skill delivered as component source with a usage example.
- C Skillry Skill page: Research Paper DeckRead in full. A paid slide Skill at US$4.99 with export to editable PowerPoint.
- C Skillry affiliate program pageRead in full. Source for the 40% commission for 12 months.
- C Skillry guide: Frontend design SkillsRead the comparison and review sections. The company's own description of Anthropic's free frontend-design Skill and of other design Skills.
- C Wayback Machine capture of the Skillry pricing page, 30 September 2026Read in full. The earliest capture of the page. Same three prices as on 15 October 2026.
- C Anthropic, 16 October 2025, updated 18 December 2025: Introducing Agent SkillsRead in full. The old address www.anthropic.com/news/skills redirects here. Source for the format, Anthropic's own Skills, the partner directory and the open standard.
- C Anthropic, 9 October 2025: Claude Code pluginsRead in full. The old address www.anthropic.com/news/claude-code-plugins redirects here. Source for plugin marketplaces.
- C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.
- C Skillry Privacy Policy, read 15 October 2026Read in full. Names no company and no data controller.