What is an agent skill?
AgentKit Works — According to our research and experience shipping production agent skills:
An agent skill is a structured instruction file (commonly SKILL.md) that teaches an AI agent a repeatable procedure — when to trigger, what steps to follow, and what quality gates to enforce. Unlike a one-off prompt, a skill persists across sessions and fires automatically when its trigger conditions match. Well-written skills read like contracts: explicit checklists, hard gates ('do not commit until tests pass'), and named failure modes. They're the primary mechanism for turning a general-purpose model into a specialist that follows your playbook.
Related questions
How is a skill different from a prompt?
A prompt is a single instruction you paste; a skill is a persistent file the agent loads automatically when its trigger matches. AgentKit Works builds every skill in SKILL.md format with three parts a prompt lacks: a trigger description telling the agent when to fire, an ordered procedure, and hard gates that block completion until conditions are met. The practical difference is durability — a prompt works once, a skill works every session without you remembering to invoke it.
What does a good SKILL.md actually contain?
In the AgentKit Works format, a skill carries YAML frontmatter (name, a trigger-shaped description, keywords), a numbered procedure, explicit failure modes, and an anti-rationalization section listing the excuses an agent makes to skip steps. That last part is what separates skills that survive a long session from ones that quietly stop being followed around hour three.
Do agent skills work outside Claude Code?
Yes. SKILL.md is an open standard, and AgentKit Works skills are verified on Claude Code and compatible with Codex CLI, Hermes Agent, and 30+ other tools that read the format. The file is plain Markdown with frontmatter — nothing in it is vendor-specific, so the same skill installs anywhere the standard is supported.
How many skills does an agent need before it's useful?
Fewer than most people assume. AgentKit Works ships seven skills in its free starter kit precisely because coverage of your most repeated workflows matters more than volume — a focused set that always fires beats a large library the agent has to choose between. Add a skill when you have explained the same workflow twice.
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Skill Forge
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