Select region in Emacs

SkillFiles & storage

This skill should be used when the user invokes "/select" to open one or more files in Emacs and select a region relevant to the current discussion via emacsclient.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the Select region in Emacs skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by xenodium/emacs-skills in skills/select/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Open one or more files in Emacs and select (activate the region around) the code or text most relevant to the current discussion using emacsclient --eval. This allows the user to immediately act on the selection: narrow, copy, refactor, comment, etc.

Determine the relevant files and line ranges from the most recent interaction context.

How to select

First, locate agent-skill-select.el which lives alongside this skill file at skills/select/agent-skill-select.el in the emacs-skills plugin directory.

emacsclient --eval '
(progn
  (load "/path/to/skills/select/agent-skill-select.el" nil t)
  (agent-skill-select
    :selections (quote (("/path/to/file1.el"
                         :start 10
                         :end 25)
                        ("/path/to/file2.el"
                         :start 5
                         :end 12)))))'
  • :start is the 1-indexed start line.
  • :end is the 1-indexed end line.
  • The last file visited will have the visually active region. Other files have mark and point set (use C-x C-x to reactivate when switching to them).

Rules

  • Use absolute paths for files.
  • Choose the region most relevant to the current discussion (e.g., a function just modified, a block with an error, code just generated).
  • If no specific region is apparent, select the entire relevant function or block.
  • Locate agent-skill-select.el relative to this skill file's directory.
  • If no relevant files or regions exist in the recent interaction, inform the user.
  • Run the emacsclient --eval command via the Bash tool.

Signals

GitHub stars
135
Forks
17
Last commit
Jul 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
select
Source
github.com/xenodium/emacs-skills