Agent Skills

Agent Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and use to do things more accurately and efficiently. An open standard for packaging agent capabilities.

Quick Start

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file:

my-skill/
├── SKILL.md          # Required: instructions + metadata
├── scripts/          # Optional: executable code
├── references/       # Optional: documentation
└── assets/           # Optional: templates, resources

Minimal SKILL.md:

---
name: my-skill
description: Does X when user needs Y.
---

# My Skill

## When to use
Use when the user needs to...

## Instructions
1. First step...
2. Second step...

Documentation

Full documentation in docs/. See docs/000-index.md for navigation.

By Topic

Topic	Files	Description
Overview	001	What Agent Skills are and their purpose
Concepts	002	Skill structure and functionality
Integration	003	How to add skills support to agents
Specification	004	Complete technical format reference

By Keyword

Keyword	File
agent-skills	docs/001-home.md
skill-structure	docs/002-what-are-skills.md
progressive-disclosure	docs/002-what-are-skills.md
skills-integration	docs/003-integrate-skills.md
ai-agents	docs/003-integrate-skills.md
skill-format	docs/004-specification.md
directory-structure	docs/004-specification.md
yaml-frontmatter	docs/004-specification.md
validation	docs/004-specification.md

Learning Path

1. Foundation: Read docs/001-home.md for overview
2. Concepts: Read docs/002-what-are-skills.md for structure
3. Integration: Read docs/003-integrate-skills.md for implementation
4. Reference: Consult docs/004-specification.md for technical details

Common Tasks

Create a new skill

→ docs/002-what-are-skills.md (structure and SKILL.md format) → docs/004-specification.md (frontmatter fields, naming rules)

Integrate skills into an agent

→ docs/003-integrate-skills.md (discovery, metadata, activation)

Validate skill format

→ docs/004-specification.md (validation rules, skills-ref tool)

Understand progressive disclosure

→ docs/002-what-are-skills.md (how skills manage context efficiently)