Skills

What is a Skill?

A Skill is a Markdown file that provides a structured prompt — a set of instructions, context, and examples — for a recurring task. Think of it as a custom persona or playbook that you hand to the agent at the start of a task.

Skills are stored as SKILL.md files in your Agently config directory or within a workspace folder. They're plain text, version-controllable, and shareable.

SKILL.md Format

A SKILL.md file has a required frontmatter block followed by the instruction body:

---
name: code-reviewer
description: Review TypeScript code for bugs, style, and performance
version: 1.0
tags: [engineering, code, review]
---

You are an expert TypeScript code reviewer.

When reviewing code:
1. Check for type safety issues and any use of `any`
2. Look for performance bottlenecks (unnecessary re-renders, N+1 queries)
3. Flag style violations (follow the project's ESLint config)
4. Suggest cleaner alternatives where applicable
5. Be specific: reference line numbers and explain the why

Output format:
- **Critical**: Must fix before merge
- **Warning**: Should fix, but not blocking
- **Suggestion**: Nice to have

Be concise. Don't repeat what the code does — focus on what could be better.

Invoking a Skill

Type @skill-name at the beginning of your message to attach a skill to the conversation:

You can also activate a skill from the right panel under Active Skills, which keeps it active for the entire conversation.

Skill Storage Locations

Best Practices

• ✓One skill per task type. A "code-reviewer" skill and a "commit-message-writer" skill are better than one giant "engineering" skill.
• ✓Include examples. Show the agent what good output looks like with a few concrete examples in the skill body.
• ✓Keep descriptions short. The description field is shown in autocomplete — make it scannable.
• ✓Version your skills. Skills are plain Markdown files. Put them in your git repo to track changes over time.

Example Skills