Skills for Beginners
A simple path for understanding how reusable task knowledge becomes an agent Skill.
The problem Skills solve
Agents often know general language and code patterns, but they do not automatically know your team's workflow, domain rules, output format, or preferred validation steps. Skills package that repeatable expertise.
The basic folder
A Skill starts with SKILL.md. That file tells the agent when to use the Skill and what procedure to follow.
my-skill/ βββ SKILL.md βββ references/ βββ scripts/ βββ assets/
How activation works
The agent first sees only the Skill name and description. If the user task matches, it loads the full instructions. Extra files are loaded only when the Skill tells the agent to read them.
Catalog shown to the agent: name: release-notes description: Draft customer-facing release notes from merged PRs, commits, or changelog entries. User request: "Turn these merged PRs into release notes." Agent action: Load .agents/skills/release-notes/SKILL.md and follow its workflow.
Practice path
Learn Skills by building one small folder, testing activation, and improving the instructions from real failures.
Copy the folder and SKILL.md from Skill Quickstart.
Read Skill Structure so references, scripts, and assets make sense.
Use Skill Template as a starting point.
Run should-trigger and should-not-trigger examples from Evaluate Skills.