Follow up JetBrains AI Assistant upstream updates: project skills via .agents/skills (Skill Manager, 2026.1)

[dyoshikawa]

Summary

JetBrains AI Assistant 2026.1 added a Skill Manager / Skill Repository whose project-level skills are auto-discovered from the shared, committable .agents/skills directory. rulesync's aiassistant target supports only rules and ignore, so skills is unsupported despite the surface being file-based and version-controllable.

Recent Releases

• AI Assistant 2026.1 (released 2025-12-18; docs updated through June 2026).
• Agent Skills doc (v2026.1, dated 2026-06-12): https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/agent-skills.html
• Skill Manager & Skill Repository announcement (2026-04): https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/04/skill-manager-and-skill-repository/

Gaps

• skills — unsupported for aiassistant, upstream now reads committable project skills. AI Assistant's Agent Skills Manager auto-discovers project-level skills from .agents/skills (and agent-specific roots like .claude/skills, .codex/skills); the docs explicitly state these project paths "travel with the repository and be shared through version control." rulesync has no aiassistant-skill.ts and the skills feature is gated off for this target; it already ships a generic agentsskills-skill.ts adapter that emits to the .agents/skills convention AI Assistant reads. Source: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/agent-skills.html

Proposed Follow-up

• Add an aiassistant-skill.ts adapter (mirroring agentsskills-skill.ts / junie-skill.ts) writing project skills to .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md; register it in skills-processor.ts and getToolTargets. IDE-level/global skill storage is internal (not a committable path), so follow the project-scope-only convention for the native surface; update the README support matrix accordingly.

Not gaps (verified): MCP exists in 2026.1 but configuration lives only in IDE settings (no committable file); / chat commands and the Claude Agent integration have no project-file surface; rules remain project-only upstream (no global location); no hooks/permissions surface documented.

References

• https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/agent-skills.html — committable .agents/skills discovery (the proposed target).
• https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/04/skill-manager-and-skill-repository/ — Skill Manager/Repository feature context and timing.
• https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/mcp.html — confirms MCP is IDE-settings only (why mcp stays unsupported).