AI Agent Statistics
- 85,807 listings and 215,946,470 skill installs (catalog dump 16 October 2026)
- 8 of 5,690 publishing accounts hold 50.05% of skill installs (dump 28 August 2026)
What research exists on the AI agent ecosystem?
Skillselion Research dumps the production catalog on a named date, freezes the counts, and ships the CSV. The latest dump counts 85,807 listings and 215,946,470 skill installs (16 October 2026); the MCP census counts 8,433 servers (14 August 2026). Cite a dated census when the number has to last. Use State of AI Agent Skills 2026 for the live catalog.
Last updated 8 November 2026. Edition numbers stay on their dump dates.
- How Skillselion Research is done states the freeze law in one sentence: "Once an edition is public, its published numbers do not move."
- Editions ship the CSV, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Which reports can I cite?
Open a card for the finding. Each edition's CSV is on the report page and linked from the card. Start at AI Agent Statistics for one sourced number. The first freeze is 9 August 2026 (79,827 listings); later August dumps are larger and live on their own URLs.
The Jev Skill-Picking Experiment
- Jev picked a fitting skill 89% of the time, 25 to 28 points above our search ranker and level with Claude Haiku 5.5
- Jev answered in 212 ms at the median, 8.5 times faster than Haiku via OpenRouter, for $0.047 per 1,000 picks
The Agent Skill Dependency Census
- 18.7% of skills with prerequisites need an account, login or API key; 12.8% a CLI
- 1,034 skills name another skill that must run first
The Agent Skill Language Census
- 909 skills (5.8%) are written mostly outside Latin script, mostly Chinese, and hold 15.4% of installs
- Three Lark accounts hold 91.3% of non-Latin installs
The Agent Skill Pricing Census
- 70.4% of priced skills are free; 24.8% need you to bring your own API key
- 89.7% of installs on priced skills go to free ones; paid skills take 0.5%
The Agent Skill Author Census
- 8 accounts hold 50.05% of all 162,061,967 installs; the top 1% hold 83.3%
- The median author has zero installs; 52.7% of accounts have none at all
The MCP Server Census
- All 8,433 servers carry a zero install count (dump 14 August 2026)
- 14.4% of repo-backed servers share a repo, so summing stars inflates the total 1.15x
The Agent Skill Security Census
- 87.8% of listings have never been audited; the audited 12.2% hold 83.3% of installs
- 1,346 listings flagged HIGH or CRITICAL hold 15.2 million installs
The Agent Skill Clone Census
- 3,443 verified copies hold 26,061,541 installs, 15.8% of the 12 August 2026 dump
- 98.2% of skills declare no license in their manifest
The Agent Use-Case Census
- Generative media is the largest use, at 20.8% of installs
- Ten software-engineering categories combined take 30.1%
The Agent Skill Maintenance Census
- Install-weighted median code age is 6 days (dump 12 August 2026)
- 48.5% of installs sit on code pushed within a week
The Agent Economy Census
- 79,827 listings and 157,833,061 installs on the 9 August 2026 dump
- Install Gini of 0.96; 55 of 79,827 listings (0.07%) carry a price
The State of AI Agent Skills 2026
- Live totals by tool type, not a frozen dump
- Most-installed tools and category mix, as the catalog stands now
Can journalists reuse the data?
Yes. Cite the report and edition, then link the page. Example: "Skillselion Agent Economy Census, August 2026". If you need a cut we have not published, one category, one publisher, or a full distribution, email info@skillselion.com. We run it against the census dataset and send the method with the answer. The dump recipe is on How Skillselion Research is done.
Common questions
What is the difference between a census edition and the evergreen report?
A census edition is one catalog dump on one date. The published numbers never change, so a citation stays checkable. The State of AI Agent Skills 2026 report tracks the live catalog and changes as listings move.
Where is the full method written down?
On How Skillselion Research is done: the three report shapes, the dump recipe, the freeze law, the fact-check gate, CC BY reuse, and what we will not publish. Each edition adds only the caveats that belong to that dump.