Skills (Agent Skills / Claude Skills)¶

Skills provide AI agents with reusable specialized knowledge, procedures, and scripts. This page organizes related articles by category.

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Concepts: Claude Skills Complete Guide — Mechanisms, use cases, security
Creating Skills: skill-creator Complete Guide — Dialog-based Skill generation

Key Takeaways¶

Skills essence: Reusable "instruction packages" for agents
Design core: Script deterministic processing in scripts/, use text for AI judgment
Trigger design: description is the most critical element for trigger conditions

Core Design Principles¶

Principle 1: Script Deterministic Processing¶

Processing Type	Should Script?	Reason
Character/line counting	Required	Same result needed every time
Syntax/format checking	Required	Detect all items without omission
File conversion	Recommended	Output format consistency
Text editing/review	Not needed	AI judgment appropriate
Design/structure evaluation	Not needed	Context understanding required

Principle 2: Prioritize Conciseness¶

Claude is already very smart—only add information Claude doesn't inherently have.

Principle 3: Progressive Disclosure¶

Level 1: Metadata (~100 tokens, always loaded)
Level 2: SKILL.md body (<5000 tokens, on trigger)
Level 3: Bundled resources (unlimited, on demand)

Article Map¶

Introduction & Concepts¶

Article	Audience	Content
Agent Skills Quickstart	Beginner	pre-built vs SKILL.md (3 min)
Claude Skills Complete Guide	Beginner-Intermediate	Mechanisms, use cases, security

Implementation & Development¶

Article	Audience	Content
Agent Skills Guide	Intermediate	SKILL.md writing, trigger design
skill-creator Complete Guide	Intermediate	Dialog-based generation
Description Design Guide	Intermediate	Why Skills don't fire and how to fix it
Claude Skills API Implementation	Advanced	Production, error handling

Comparison & Selection¶

Article	Audience	Content
Skills vs Projects Comparison	Intermediate	Which to use
pre-built vs Custom	Beginner	Usage guide

Practice & Use Cases¶

Article	Audience	Content
Practical Use Cases	Intermediate	Where it works, benefits, measurement
Installation Guide (10 Examples)	Beginner-Intermediate	Finding skills, safety checklist

Learning Path¶

graph LR
    A[Quickstart<br/>3-min overview] --> B[Complete Guide<br/>Understanding]
    B --> C{Goal}
    C -->|Create| D[skill-creator<br/>Guide]
    C -->|Install| E[Installation<br/>Guide]
    C -->|Use API| F[API Implementation<br/>Guide]
    D --> G[Practical<br/>Use Cases]
    E --> G

Grasp concepts: Claude Skills Complete Guide
Create Skills: skill-creator Complete Guide
Apply in practice: Practical Use Cases

MCP: MCP Article Guide — Calling MCP servers from Skills
Claude Code: Claude Code Article Guide — Primary Skills integration environment
GitHub Copilot: Copilot Article Guide — Alternative Agent Skills implementation

Tag: pillar-skills