What it does
Agent Skills is a lightweight, open format for giving AI agents specialised knowledge and workflows. A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with at least a name and description plus instructions, and it can also bundle scripts, reference documents, templates and other assets. Agents load skills in three stages. At startup only each skill's name and description are read, the full instructions are loaded when a task matches, and any bundled code or referenced files are used during execution. This lets an agent keep many skills on hand with a small context footprint. The site hosts the specification, a quickstart, guides on writing, describing and evaluating skills, a client showcase, and guidance for developers adding skills support to an agent. The page says the format was originally developed by Anthropic, released as an open standard and adopted by a growing number of agent products, with discussion on GitHub and Discord.
Capabilities
- A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file of metadata and instructions
- Optional scripts, references and assets bundled with a skill
- Progressive loading keeps context use small
- Reusable across any skills-compatible agent
- Guides for creating, testing and refining skills
- Client showcase and implementation guide
When to use it
- You want to package a repeatable procedure or domain knowledge for AI agents
- You are building an agent or client and want to support skills
- You want to reuse one skill across several compatible agent products
