Agent Skills

Agent Skills are a simple, open format for giving agents new capabilities and expertise.

Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and use to perform better at specific tasks. Write once, use everywhere.

Installation

pip install skills-ref

Or using uv:

uv add skills-ref

Quick Start

CLI Usage

# Validate a skill
agentskills validate path/to/skill

# Read skill properties (outputs JSON)
agentskills read-properties path/to/skill

# Generate <available_skills> XML for agent prompts
agentskills to-prompt path/to/skill-a path/to/skill-b

Python API

from pathlib import Path
from skills_ref import validate, read_properties, to_prompt

# Validate a skill directory
errors = validate(Path("my-skill"))
if errors:
    print("Validation errors:", errors)
else:
    print("Valid skill!")

# Read skill properties
props = read_properties(Path("my-skill"))
print(f"Skill: {props.name}")
print(f"Description: {props.description}")

# Generate prompt XML for agent integration
prompt = to_prompt([Path("skill-a"), Path("skill-b")])
print(prompt)

Features

• Validation: Check skills for proper format and required fields
• Parsing: Extract skill metadata from SKILL.md frontmatter
• Prompt Generation: Create XML blocks for agent system prompts
• i18n Support: Full Unicode support for international skill names
• CLI Tools: Command-line utilities for skill management

Documentation

• Full Documentation - Guides and tutorials
• Specification - Format details
• Example Skills - See what's possible

About

Agent Skills is an open format maintained by Anthropic and open to contributions from the community.

License

Apache 2.0