SKILL.md
agentskills Documentation
Agent Skills is a lightweight, open format for extending AI agent capabilities with specialized knowledge and workflows. A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter (name and description) plus Markdown instructions. Skills can bundle scripts, references, templates, and other resources.
Quick Reference
| File | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
contents/home.mdx |
Agent Skills Overview | What Agent Skills are, why they exist, and how the format works |
contents/specification.mdx |
Specification | Complete SKILL.md format spec — frontmatter fields, directory structure, progressive disclosure |
contents/clients.mdx |
Client Showcase | Agent products that support the Agent Skills format |
contents/skill-creation/quickstart.mdx |
Quickstart | Step-by-step tutorial to create and test your first skill |
contents/skill-creation/best-practices.mdx |
Best Practices | How to write well-scoped skills grounded in real domain expertise |
contents/skill-creation/evaluating-skills.mdx |
Evaluating Skills | Eval-driven iteration — designing test cases and measuring skill output quality |
contents/skill-creation/optimizing-descriptions.mdx |
Optimizing Descriptions | How to write descriptions that trigger reliably on the right prompts |
contents/skill-creation/using-scripts.mdx |
Using Scripts | Bundling and running shell commands and scripts inside a skill |
contents/client-implementation/adding-skills-support.mdx |
Adding Skills Support | How to implement Agent Skills support in an agent or dev tool |
contents/CLAUDE.md |
CLAUDE.md | Claude Code guidance for the agentskills repo |
contents/README.md |
README | Documentation site setup and publishing instructions |
When to use
Use this skill when the user asks about:
- Creating or writing a SKILL.md file
- The Agent Skills specification or format requirements
- Best practices for skill descriptions, scoping, and structure
- Evaluating and testing skill quality with evals
- Optimizing skill descriptions for reliable triggering
- Using scripts inside skills
- Adding Agent Skills support to an AI agent or development tool
- Which agents or clients support the Agent Skills format
How to find information
- Check Quick Reference above for the relevant file
- Read specific files from
contents/{filename}