official JetBrains project

Rider Skills

A set of Agent Skills that give coding agents IDE-grade code intelligence inside JetBrains Rider. Instead of falling back to text edits, grep, and print debugging, these skills drive Rider's refactoring engine, debugger, code coverage data, and static analysis through the Rider MCP server — so a rename updates every resolved reference, a breakpoint inspects real runtime state, existing tests are located precisely, and diagnostics catch errors before a full build.

What's included

Two skills work across every Rider-supported language, one locates existing C# tests, and three are focused on Unreal Engine C++.

General — any Rider solution

Skill Purpose
refactoring-code Semantic refactoring — rename, move types/namespaces, safe-delete, extract interface/base class/method, change signatures — resolved through the IDE's reference index instead of grep + text replace.
debugging-code Debugger-driven runtime root-cause analysis — set breakpoints and tracepoints, step, inspect frame values, and evaluate expressions to answer questions static reading can't.

Both cover .NET/C#, F#, VB, C++, Unity, Unreal Engine, XAML, Razor, and other mixed-language projects.

C#/.NET

Skill Purpose
finding-tests Locate existing tests for a C# class or method using Rider's test coverage data before adding or editing tests.

Unreal Engine C++ — requires a .uproject

Skill Purpose
ue-code-authoring Write and modify UE C++ (classes, actors, components, subsystems, interfaces, function libraries) with IDE diagnostics catching UHT/reflection errors and missing module deps before a build.
ue-live-debugging Root-cause UE C++ crashes, runtime bugs, and unexpected behavior — call-hierarchy tracing, live breakpoints, crash-log triage, and live PIE state inspection via Python.
ue-test-authoring Author UE automated tests (Automation, CQTest, Functional, Gauntlet, LowLevel) with IDE checks for registration errors, wrong RunTest return types, and missing includes.

How it works

Each skill's SKILL.md teaches the workflow, decision points, and guardrails; where needed, reference/ files hold detailed tool contracts and patterns. At runtime a skill:

  1. Checks for the Rider MCP tools in the session's deferred-tool list and loads their live schemas — the schemas are authoritative for parameter names, never guessed.
  2. Uses Rider's semantic engine (ReSharper / IDE index) for anything grep can't resolve: cross-language usages, generated/reflected UE code, nameof, XAML x:Name, <see cref>, and more.
  3. Degrades gracefully. When the Rider MCP server isn't connected, the skill states the blocker and falls back to standard file/grep tools, documenting which IDE-backed quality steps were skipped.

Requirements

  • JetBrains Rider with its MCP server enabled and the target solution open.
  • A coding agent that supports Agent Skills and MCP (e.g. Claude Code).
  • For the UE skills: an Unreal Engine C++ project — a .uproject must be in the working directory.

Install

1. Connect the Rider MCP server

In Rider, open Settings → Tools → MCP Server, enable the server, and click Auto-Configure for your client (Claude Code, Codex, etc.) — Rider registers itself with the agent, no commands needed. Then run the agent from inside the solution folder Rider has open.

2. Install the skills

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add JetBrains/rider-skills
/plugin install rider-skills@rider-skills
/reload-plugins

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add JetBrains/rider-skills

Then run /plugins inside Codex and install Rider Skills from the browser.

Manual

For agents without plugin support, copy or symlink individual skill folders from skills/ into ~/.claude/skills/ (all projects) or <project>/.claude/skills/ (one project).

Repository layout

Path Contents
skills/ All six skills, one folder each.
skills/<skill>/SKILL.md Skill definition — frontmatter (name, description, allowed tools) and workflow.
skills/<skill>/reference/ Progressive-disclosure reference: tool contracts, patterns, conventions loaded on demand.
.claude-plugin/ Claude Code plugin (plugin.json) and marketplace (marketplace.json) metadata.
.codex-plugin/ Codex plugin metadata (plugin.json).

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome — improvements to workflows, reference contracts, and coverage of additional Rider languages and UE frameworks.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.