Skills

A skill is an instruction file that teaches AI coding agents how to handle specific tasks. Each skill uses a universal Markdown format (SKILL.md) with YAML frontmatter.

Skills vs Context vs Commands

Skill Format

---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill does
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: your-name
  version: "1.0"
  tags:
    - react
    - typescript
---

# My Skill

Instructions for the AI agent.

## When to Use

- Scenario 1
- Scenario 2

## Steps

1. First step
2. Second step

Skill Lifecycle

Skills progress through six stages:

1. Discovery - findAllSkills() scans directories for SKILL.md files
2. Quality Evaluation - evaluateSkillContent() produces 0-100 scores (grades A-F)
3. Parsing - parseSkillFile() extracts YAML frontmatter and markdown content
4. Translation - translateSkill() converts to agent-specific formats
5. Installation - Skills deployed to agent directories with metadata tracking
6. Testing - Test suites with 14+ assertion types validate skills

Quality Evaluation

Skills receive scores across four weighted dimensions:

• Structure - 25 points: Frontmatter completeness, markdown sections
• Clarity - 30 points: Description quality, instruction precision
• Specificity - 30 points: Concrete examples, actionable steps
• Advanced - 15 points: Test coverage, version info, examples

Grades:

• A: 90 to 100
• B: 80 to 89
• C: 70 to 79
• D: 60 to 69
• F: below 60

Skill Sources

Creating Skills

skillkit create my-skill

Or manually create a SKILL.md file following the format above.

Publishing Skills

# Test locally
skillkit validate ./my-skill

# Publish to marketplace
skillkit publish