Table of Contents

AI Agent Skill

  • 2026-09-04
  • Morten Lønskov
Applies to:
  • ❌ Tabular Editor 2
  • ❌ Tabular Editor 3
  • ✔ Tabular Editor CLI
Important

The Tabular Editor CLI is in Limited Public Preview. It is offered for evaluation with a Tabular Editor account; no license is required during preview. Commands, flags, and outputs may change before general availability. The preview build stops functioning after 2026-10-31. We recommend against using the CLI in production CI/CD pipelines during preview.

The Tabular Editor CLI ships with a drop-in agent skill that teaches AI coding agents how to drive the te command-line interface. It's a skill folder - a SKILL.md entry point plus a references/ set of on-demand deep-dive files - packed with the CLI's conventions, command reference, workflows, and gotchas. Once installed, an agent answers "deploy this model" or "add a measure that calculates margin" with idiomatic te invocations instead of guessing or hallucinating flags.

The skill is maintained in the public TabularEditor/CLI repository and tracks the preview surface of the CLI as it evolves.

What a skill is

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md entry point the agent loads on demand based on your prompt. Its YAML frontmatter (name, description, version) tells the agent when to load it and what it covers. The Markdown body teaches the agent how to do the job, and larger skills - like this one - bundle extra reference files under references/ that the agent reads only when needed.

What the skill covers

The skill teaches the agent the full te surface:

  • every te command across all families - save-as, init, deploy, refresh, bpa, validate, query, script, util, and more
  • authentication patterns - interactive, service principal with secret or certificate, environment variables, managed identity
  • object path grammar - slash form, DAX form, and wildcards
  • the save model - dry run by default, --save to persist, and the interactive shell's --stage/--revert
  • TE2 to CLI migration mapping
  • CI/CD recipes for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps
  • output formats, exit codes, environment variables, and config keys
  • a cheatsheet of common property names for -p Name=Value
  • the gotchas that trip up agents in practice

This is the same ground the rest of this section documents for humans. See Command Reference for the command reference, Authentication and Connections for authentication, and CI/CD Integration for pipeline patterns.

Download the skill

The skill lives in the skills/te-cli folder of the CLI repository - SKILL.md plus its references/ subfolder.

  1. Clone the TabularEditor/CLI repository, or download the repository ZIP (Code > Download ZIP) and extract it.
  2. Copy the whole skills/te-cli/ folder somewhere convenient, keeping the references/ subfolder next to SKILL.md.

You'll move this folder to a tool-specific location in the install steps below. To see what changed between versions before grabbing a newer copy, check the CHANGELOG.

Choose an install scope

Every agent supports two install scopes:

  • Project scope - the skill is available only in one project or repository. Use this when not every project touches semantic models.
  • User scope - the skill is available in every project on your machine. Use this if you work with semantic models across many repos.

Install for Claude Code

Claude Code loads skills from a named folder under .claude/skills/. The description field is matched against your prompts, so the skill only loads when relevant - it costs no tokens when you're working on unrelated code.

Project scope - the skill loads only inside this project:

  1. In your project root, create the folder .claude/skills/te-cli/.
  2. Copy the contents of the downloaded te-cli folder (SKILL.md and references/) into that folder.

The final path is <your-project>/.claude/skills/te-cli/SKILL.md, with references/ alongside it.

User scope - the skill loads in every project for the current user:

  1. Create a te-cli folder inside your user-level Claude skills directory:
    • macOS / Linux: ~/.claude/skills/te-cli/
    • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\te-cli\ (typically C:\Users\<you>\.claude\skills\te-cli\)
  2. Copy the contents of the downloaded te-cli folder (SKILL.md and references/) into that folder.
Note

Claude Code watches skill directories and picks up new or edited skills within the current session - no restart needed. The exception is creating a .claude/skills/ directory that did not exist when the session started: restart Claude Code once so it begins watching the new directory.

Verify the skill loaded

Inside a Claude Code session, run:

/skills

You should see te-cli in the list. If it's missing, confirm the file path and that the file starts with --- and has name: te-cli on the second line, then restart Claude Code.

For a functional smoke test, ask:

what does `te deploy` do without `--execute`?

Claude answers with the documented behavior - it's a dry run that prints the TMSL deployment script to stdout without deploying anything - which confirms the skill is loaded and in use.

Install for Claude.ai and Claude Desktop

Claude.ai (web and desktop) has a built-in Skills feature. Skills require code execution, and you upload them as a ZIP of the skill folder rather than the bare SKILL.md.

  1. Enable code execution: go to Settings > Capabilities and turn on Code execution and file creation. On Team and Enterprise plans, an owner enables this in organization settings.
  2. Compress the whole downloaded te-cli folder (including references/) into te-cli.zip.
  3. Go to Settings > Capabilities > Skills (also reachable under Customize > Skills).
  4. Click +, choose Upload skill, and select te-cli.zip. Claude reads the SKILL.md inside and shows a summary of the skill.
  5. Toggle the skill on. It loads automatically when you mention te or a related concept.

Custom skills you upload are private to your account unless an owner enables organization-wide sharing on Team or Enterprise.

See Anthropic's Skills help article for the current UI flow if the wording has changed.

Install for GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot in VS Code supports the Agent Skills open standard natively - the same SKILL.md format Claude Code and Codex use. This is the recommended approach because the skill loads only when relevant. For Copilot setups that predate Agent Skills, fall back to the generic AGENTS.md install below.

Agent Skills (VS Code)

Place the skill folder contents (SKILL.md and references/) in a named folder under a skills directory. The folder name must match the name field in the frontmatter, so use te-cli, and keep the YAML frontmatter intact.

  • Workspace scope: .github/skills/te-cli/SKILL.md (Copilot also reads .claude/skills/ and .agents/skills/).
  • User scope: ~/.copilot/skills/te-cli/SKILL.md (Copilot also reads ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/).

Type / in Copilot Chat to confirm te-cli appears as a slash command, or open the Agent Customizations editor with Chat: Open Customizations from the Command Palette.

Install for OpenAI Codex CLI

Codex CLI loads skills natively from a named folder under .agents/skills/, the same directory-based model as Claude Code. Keep the YAML frontmatter - Codex requires the name and description fields and uses the description to decide when to load the skill.

Project scope - the skill loads only inside this project:

  1. In your project root, create the folder .agents/skills/te-cli/.
  2. Copy the contents of the downloaded te-cli folder (SKILL.md and references/) into that folder.

Codex scans upward from your working directory, so a skill committed at the repository root ($REPO_ROOT/.agents/skills/te-cli/) is shared across everyone working in the repo.

Personal scope - the skill loads in every project for the current user:

  1. Create the folder te-cli inside your personal Codex skills directory: ~/.agents/skills/te-cli/.
  2. Copy the contents of the downloaded te-cli folder (SKILL.md and references/) into that folder.

Run /skills in the Codex CLI or IDE to confirm te-cli is listed, and type $ to mention a skill explicitly.

Install for generic agents

For tools that follow the AGENTS.md convention or accept an arbitrary instructions file - Aider, Continue, custom in-house agents:

  1. Download the skill folder.
  2. In a copy of SKILL.md, remove the YAML frontmatter block at the top (everything between the first and second --- lines, including those lines).
  3. Rename that file to AGENTS.md and place it at your project root, or wherever the tool expects its instructions file.
  4. Copy the references/ folder next to your AGENTS.md so its relative links keep working.
  5. The next agent invocation in that project picks up the instructions.

Update the skill

To pull a newer version:

  1. Grab the latest skills/te-cli folder from GitHub (re-clone, pull, or re-download the repository ZIP).
  2. Replace what you previously installed:
    • Native skills (Claude Code, Codex, Copilot Agent Skills): replace the whole skill folder contents (SKILL.md and references/).
    • Claude.ai / Desktop: re-zip the te-cli folder and re-upload it through the Skills UI.
    • Instruction-file installs (AGENTS.md): re-paste the body into AGENTS.md and refresh the copied references/ folder.

See the CHANGELOG for what changed between versions.

Next steps