Installing

Install capabilities from a local directory, the registry, or the TUI capability manager.

Install a capability and the runtime picks up its agents, tools, skills, MCP servers, and workers on the next load. Three paths: a local directory you’re developing, a published registry version, or a click in the TUI.

# Local development — symlinks for live editing
dn capability install ./capabilities/threat-hunting

# Published version
dn capability install acme/[email protected]

Install from disk

dn capability install ./path validates the manifest, then symlinks the source directory into ~/.dreadnode/capabilities/. Edits to the source appear on the next runtime reload — no re-install needed.

dn capability install ./capabilities/threat-hunting

Two flags change the default:

--copy — snapshot the source instead of symlinking. Use this when you want a frozen install that won’t follow source edits.
--force — replace an existing install. Without it, re-running install against the same name fails.

Browse the web catalog

The web app has a catalog at /capabilities — grid view for scanning, table view for sorting by version or author, and filters for author and keyword.

Web capability catalog — table view

Click any capability to open its detail drawer. That’s where you’ll find the exact install commands for the CLI and the TUI, along with the full manifest metadata and link to docs:

Capability detail drawer with CLI and TUI install commands

Copy the dn capability install command from the drawer, or paste the /capabilities → <name> path into an active TUI session.

Install from the registry

dn capability install acme/[email protected]

install downloads the bundle, validates it, and registers it for the active project. pull downloads without registering — useful when you want to read or fork the bundle.

dn capability pull acme/[email protected] --output ./forks/

Install from the TUI

dn

Press Ctrl+P to open the capability manager.

Installed tab — capabilities bound to the active project, with toggles to enable, disable, or edit flags
Available tab — capabilities you can install from your org inventory and the public catalog

Capability manager — Installed tab

Tab over to Available to see what your org and the public catalog expose:

Capability manager — Available tab

Select an available capability and press Enter to install. The manager runs the same validation path as the CLI.

For loading capabilities programmatically from Python, see the SDK overview and dreadnode.capabilities.

Where the runtime looks

A local runtime searches three sources in order; the first match on a given name wins:

Project-local — .dreadnode/capabilities/ in the project root
User-local — ~/.dreadnode/capabilities/ (where install puts things)
Override — directories listed in DREADNODE_CAPABILITY_DIRS (: on Unix, ; on Windows)

A sandbox runtime loads only capabilities synced from your workspace — local directories are not consulted. Local and workspace sources never coexist on the same runtime, so there is no shadowing between them.

export DREADNODE_CAPABILITY_DIRS="/opt/capabilities:$HOME/dev/capabilities"
dn

Entries resolve to absolute paths and are searched after project-local and user-local directories.