4 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Matt Piccolella
bd17d34ec3 Small tweak to blog link 2025-10-16 09:07:08 -07:00
Keith Lazuka
10e0fbe1a4 Add initial Agent Skills Spec (#2) 2025-10-16 11:32:56 -04:00
Keith Lazuka
ec841043a5 Add 3rd Party notices (#4) 2025-10-16 08:32:27 -07:00
Matt Piccolella
67ada86353 Adding more details to README (#3)
* Adding details about document skills

* Adding partner skills section
2025-10-16 08:22:54 -07:00
2 changed files with 74 additions and 2 deletions

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@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ For more information, check out:
- [What are skills?](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512176-what-are-skills)
- [Using skills in Claude](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512180-using-skills-in-claude)
- [How to create custom skills](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512198-creating-custom-skills)
- [Equipping agents for the real world with Skills](https://anthropic.com/engineering/equipping-agents-for-the-real-world-with-skills)
- [Equipping agents for the real world with Agent Skills](https://anthropic.com/engineering/equipping-agents-for-the-real-world-with-agent-skills)
# About This Repository
@@ -42,6 +42,17 @@ This repository includes a diverse collection of example skills demonstrating di
- **skill-creator** - Guide for creating effective skills that extend Claude's capabilities
- **template-skill** - A basic template to use as a starting point for new skills
# Document Skills
The `document-skills/` subdirectory contains skills that Anthropic developed to help Claude create various document file formats. These skills demonstrate advanced patterns for working with complex file formats and binary data:
- **docx** - Create, edit, and analyze Word documents with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction
- **pdf** - Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms
- **pptx** - Create, edit, and analyze PowerPoint presentations with support for layouts, templates, charts, and automated slide generation
- **xlsx** - Create, edit, and analyze Excel spreadsheets with support for formulas, formatting, data analysis, and visualization
**Important Disclaimer:** These document skills are point-in-time snapshots and are not actively maintained or updated. Versions of these skills ship pre-included with Claude. They are primarily intended as reference examples to illustrate how Anthropic approaches developing more complex skills that work with binary file formats and document structures.
# Creating a Basic Skill
Skills are simple to create - just a folder with a `SKILL.md` file containing YAML frontmatter and instructions. You can use the **template-skill** in this repository as a starting point:
@@ -69,4 +80,10 @@ The frontmatter requires only two fields:
- `name` - A unique identifier for your skill (lowercase, hyphens for spaces)
- `description` - A complete description of what the skill does and when to use it
The markdown content below contains the instructions, examples, and guidelines that Claude will follow. For more details, see [How to create custom skills](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512198-creating-custom-skills).
The markdown content below contains the instructions, examples, and guidelines that Claude will follow. For more details, see [How to create custom skills](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512198-creating-custom-skills).
# Partner Skills
Skills are a great way to teach Claude how to get better at using specific pieces of software. As we see awesome example skills from partners, we may highlight some of them here:
- **Notion** - [Notion Skills for Claude](https://www.notion.so/notiondevs/Notion-Skills-for-Claude-28da4445d27180c7af1df7d8615723d0)

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agent_skills_spec.md Normal file
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# Agent Skills Spec
A skill is a folder of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and load dynamically to perform better at specific tasks. In order for the folder to be recognized as a skill, it must contain a `SKILL.md` file.
# Skill Folder Layout
A minimal skill folder looks like this:
```
my-skill/
- SKILL.md
```
More complex skills can add additional directories and files as needed.
# The SKILL.md file
The skill's "entrypoint" is the `SKILL.md` file. It is the only file required to exist. The file must start with a YAML frontmatter followed by regular Markdown.
## YAML Frontmatter
The YAML frontmatter has 2 required properties:
- `name`
- The name of the skill in hyphen-case
- Restricted to lowercase Unicode alphanumeric + hyphen
- Must match the name of the directory containing the SKILL.md
- `description`
- Description of what the skill does and when Claude should use it
There are 3 optional properties:
- `license`
- The license applied to the skill
- We recommend keeping it short (either the name of a license or the name of a bundled license file)
- `allowed-tools`
- A list of tools that are pre-approved to run
- Currently only supported in Claude Code
- `metadata`
- A map from string keys to string values
- Clients can use this to store additional properties not defined by the Agent Skills Spec
- We recommend making your key names reasonably unique to avoid accidental conflicts
## Markdown Body
The Markdown body has no restrictions on it.
# Additional Information
For a minimal example, see the `template-skill` example.
# Version History
- 1.0 (2025-10-16) Public Launch