skill-class-model-en

name	skill-class-model-en
license	CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
description	Documents the Skill Class Model — the OO-based taxonomy that classifies every Agent Skill as one of: Role, Topic, Process, or OneStepProcess, each extending the base Skill class. Defines the v1 metadata extension fields for skill-class, crud-verb, topic, requires-role, subprocess-of, subtopic-of, and subrole-of. Use when an agent or author needs to classify a skill, assign metadata, understand the class hierarchy, or check naming conventions. Activate for phrases like: "what class is this skill", "how do I classify a skill", "skill taxonomy", "skill-class metadata", "is-a or has-a for skills", "what metadata does a Role need", or "naming convention for process skills".
metadata	{"author":"roebi","skill-class":"topic","requires-role":"sw-architect","spec":"https://agentskills.io/specification"}

Skill Class Model

The Skill Class Model applies object-oriented design to Agent Skills. Every skill is an instance of a class that extends the base Skill class. Classes are discriminated by the metadata.skill-class field (v1 extension).

Class Hierarchy (is-a / inheritance)

Skill                          ← base class (agentskills.io)
├── Role                       ← extends Skill
├── Topic                      ← extends Skill
└── Process                    ← extends Skill
    └── OneStepProcess         ← extends Process

Composition (has-a)

Topic          has  Subtopic        1:n
Topic          has  File            1:n

Role           has  Subrole         1:n

Process        needs  Role          1:n   (mandatory)
Process        has    Subprocess    1:n

OneStepProcess needs  Role          0..1  (optional)

Key rule: Process is higher than Role. A Process needs one or more Roles — never the other way around.

The Subject and the Verb

A Topic is the subject — the thing that gets operated on. A OneStepProcess applies a CRUD verb to a Topic.

crud	natural language equivalents
create	create, generate, scaffold, write, init
read	read, search, find, list, get, describe, show
update	update, fix, move, rename, migrate, refactor
delete	delete, remove, clean, prune

Naming Conventions

Class	Pattern	Example
Role	role-<name>-en	role-sw-architect-en
Topic	<topic>-en or <compound-topic>-en	agentic-runtime-architecture-en
Process	<name>-en	onboarding-employee-en
OneStepProcess	<crud-verb>-<topic>-en	create-agent-skill-en

Metadata Fields — v1

See references/metadata-v1.md for the full field reference.

Quick summary:

# All classes — discriminator (required for classified skills)
metadata:
  skill-class: role | topic | process | one-step-process

# Role adds:
  subrole-of: <role-name>           # optional

# Topic adds:
  subtopic-of: <topic-name>         # optional
  requires-role: <role-name>        # optional

# Process adds:
  requires-role: <role-name>        # 1:n comma-separated (mandatory)
  subprocess-of: <process-name>     # optional

# OneStepProcess adds:
  crud-verb: create | read | update | delete   # mandatory
  topic: <topic-name>                          # mandatory
  subprocess-of: <process-name>               # optional
  requires-role: <role-name>                  # optional 0..1

Composability Chain

When an agent loads a skill it resolves the role chain automatically:

load skill
  → read requires-role
    → load role-<name>-en
      → agent has role context + task context
        → execute

References

• references/metadata-v1.md — full field-by-field metadata reference
• references/examples.md — concrete skills mapped to each class