Install failed at the first hurdle....

[streeyt]

Describe the bug

After running npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes I got the following error:

Failed to clone https://github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes.git: Cloning into
  '/var/folders/fg/rb4d4ydn0yv71v2s89wf_1f00000gn/T/skills-KG5PyK'...

git-lfs filter-process: git-lfs: command not found

  │  git-lfs filter-process: git-lfs: command not found
  │  fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly  │
  │  warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
  │
  │  You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status'
  │
  │  and retry with 'git restore --source=HEAD :/'

The fix was clear, but I just wanted to flag this.

brew install git-lfs

Then retry:

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes

(brew applies to macOS)

Link to reproduction

https://www.apple.com

Steps to reproduce

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes on a machine without git-lfs installed

Expected behavior

Should check for the presence of git-lfs , install it, and/or prompt the user in a more elegant way that they need to install it.

Actual behavior

Throws a big error and didn't seem to install as expected.

Environment

macOS 26.3
node v22.16.0

Additional context

No response

[albertosantini]

Maybe it is due to the upstream skills.
See vercel-labs/skills#952

I set GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 and I used skills 1.5.1 with that fix, but the issue remains.

Edit: basically git-lfs is only required because there are a few media artifacts in tests

[dlewand691]

I can confirm the issue and fix, just happened to me.

[jrusso1020]

Thanks for the report and for @albertosantini for the upstream link. Dug into this:

Root cause: my prior vercel-labs/skills#952 set GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1, but that env var is read by git-lfs itself — if git-lfs is not installed at all, git tries to invoke git-lfs filter-process (as configured in this repo's .gitattributes for regression-test baselines), can't find the binary, and aborts the checkout. The env var is never consulted.

Fixes being landed:

1. Upstream skills CLI — vercel-labs/skills#987 adds filter.lfs.* config overrides to the clone, which disables the LFS filter at the git-command level so checkout succeeds regardless of whether git-lfs is installed. Empirically verified: reproduces the exact error on current main, clones cleanly in <1s with the fix.
2. README documentation — #423 adds a short "Cloning the repo" section explaining the Git LFS requirement and the GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 workaround, for anyone cloning directly or on a skills version that doesn't yet ship the upstream fix.

Keeping this open until the upstream fix lands and we bump the skills dependency.

Workaround for anyone hitting this today: brew install git-lfs (macOS), sudo apt install git-lfs (Debian/Ubuntu), then retry.