skill-creator

# Skill Creator This skill provides guidance for creating effective skills. ## About Skills Skills are modular, self-contained packages that extend agent capabilities by providing specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools. Think of them as "onboarding guides" for specific domains or tasks—they transform a general-purpose agent into a specialized agent equipped with procedural knowledge and domain expertise. ### Skill Location for Deepagents In deepagents CLI, skills are stored in `~/.deepagents/<agent>/skills/` where `<agent>` is your agent configuration name (default is `agent`). For example, with the default configuration, skills live at: ```txt ~/.deepagents/agent/skills/ ├── skill-name-1/ │ └── SKILL.md ├── skill-name-2/ │ └── SKILL.md └── ... ``` ### What Skills Provide 1. Specialized workflows - Multi-step procedures for specific domains 2. Tool integrations - Instructions for working with specific file formats or APIs 3. Domain expertise - Company-specific knowledge, schemas, business logic 4. Bundled resources - Scripts, references, and assets for complex and repetitive tasks ## Core Principles ### Concise is Key The context window is a public good. Skills share the context window with everything else the agent needs: system prompt, conversation history, other Skills' metadata, and the actual user request. **Default assumption: The agent is already very capable.** Only add context the agent doesn't already have. ### Anatomy of a Skill Every skill consists of a required SKILL.md file and optional bundled resources: ```txt skill-name/ ├── SKILL.md (required) │ ├── YAML frontmatter metadata (required) │ │ ├── name: (required) │ │ └── description: (required) │ └── Markdown instructions (required) └── Bundled Resources (optional) ├── scripts/ - Executable code (TypeScript/JavaScript/etc.) ├── references/ - Documentation intended to be loaded into context as needed └── assets/ - Files used in output (templates, icons, fonts, etc.) ``` ## Skill Creation Process Skill creation involves these steps: 1. Understand the skill with concrete examples 2. Plan reusable skill contents (scripts, references, assets) 3. Initialize the skill (run init_skill.ts) 4. Edit the skill (implement resources and write SKILL.md) 5. Validate the skill (run quick_validate.ts) 6. Iterate based on real usage ### Step 3: Initializing the Skill When creating a new skill from scratch, run the `init_skill.ts` script: ```bash npx tsx scripts/init_skill.ts <skill-name> --path <output-directory> ``` For deepagents, use the agent's skills directory: ```bash npx tsx scripts/init_skill.ts <skill-name> --path ~/.deepagents/agent/skills ``` ### Step 5: Validate the Skill Once development of the skill is complete, validate it: ```bash npx tsx scripts/quick_validate.ts <path/to/skill-folder> ``` The validation script checks: - YAML frontmatter format and required fields - Skill naming conventions (hyphen-case, max 64 characters) - Description completeness (max 1024 characters) - Required fields: `name` and `description`