| name | write-skill |
| icon | lucide:graduation-cap |
| labels | ["Authoring"] |
| description | Use this skill whenever you create or update a skill in a Tale organization — a SKILL.md bundle that teaches agents a capability or procedure. Triggers include: "write/add a skill", "teach the agent to …", "package this procedure so agents can reuse it", or an agent that keeps needing the same instructions. Never author a SKILL.md without it — and never create one before listing the existing skills and ruling out reuse. To make an agent load a skill, bind it via skillBindings (write-agent); to ship skills inside an installable bundle, use write-automation. |
write-skill
A skill is a bundle directory skills/<slug>/ with a SKILL.md at its root plus optional assets
(scripts, reference files). Agents see a skill only when their skillBindings list its slug (max
10 per agent — there is no implicit "all skills"); the description alone decides whether the agent
loads it, so the description carries the invocation.
Reuse before you create — tick every box
Frontmatter — the validated contract
SKILL.md must open with a strict-YAML frontmatter block fenced by --- lines (≤16 KB):
name (required) — must equal the bundle directory slug: kebab-case
^[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*$, ≤64 chars. anthropic and claude are reserved and rejected.description (required, 1–1024 chars) — the invocation. Open with
Use this skill whenever <situation> …, enumerate the concrete triggers, close with the
boundary (which sibling skill owns the adjacent case).- Optional:
license (≤120 chars); recommended-packages with python/node spec lists (≤20
each, ≤120 chars per spec — advisory only, never auto-installed);
disable-model-invocation: true (the skill is never auto-loaded; explicit recall only);
icon (an Iconify set:name like lucide:book-open, shown on the catalog card);
labels (≤8 literal display chips like ["Documents"], shown on the catalog card — the same
vocabulary automation manifests use); metadata (free-form record). Unknown keys are
preserved, not rejected.
---
name: triage-inbox
description: Use this skill whenever you triage incoming support email — classify, route, and draft a reply. Never answer a support thread without it.
---
# triage-inbox
1. Classify the message: bug / billing / question.
2. ...
Body — keep it a procedure
- Imperative steps the agent runs the same way every time; ≤ ~150 lines. Push depth into companion
files inside the bundle and link them with a one-line "read when".
- Cut lines the model already obeys by default ("be careful", "write clear names") — every sentence
must change behaviour.
- Scripts live in the bundle (e.g.
scripts/convert.py) and are invoked bundle-relative.
Limits and validation
- Bundle caps: ≤2 MiB per file, ≤20 MiB decompressed total, ≤200 entries.
- Malformed frontmatter (missing fence, invalid YAML, failed field) is rejected at upload/save as
invalid_frontmatter with the offending line — nothing broken ever lands in the org.
Siblings: write-agent (binding skills to agents), write-workflow (processes, not capabilities),
write-automation (shipping a bundle of entities as one installable automation).
