Skills Guide

Skills provide specialized instructions to the agent via progressive disclosure. Instead of loading all knowledge upfront, skills are referenced in the system prompt and loaded on-demand when needed.

Table of Contents

Overview

Skills follow the Anthropic Agent Skills standard. They are markdown files with YAML frontmatter that provide specialized instructions for specific tasks.

Philosophy: Keep the system prompt minimal. Load domain knowledge only when the task requires it.

How Skills Work

  1. Discovery: At startup, agenix scans skill directories and adds a list of available skills to the system prompt

  2. On-Demand Loading: When the agent recognizes a task matches a skill, it uses the read tool to load the skill file

  3. Progressive Disclosure: Only the skills needed for the current task are loaded, keeping context minimal

Built-in Skills

Agenix ships with 7 default skills:

pdf

Process and extract content from PDF files.

Use when: Working with PDF documents, extracting text, analyzing PDF structure

xlsx

Handle Excel spreadsheet operations.

Use when: Reading, writing, or analyzing Excel files

docx

Process Microsoft Word documents.

Use when: Working with .docx files, extracting content, modifying documents

pptx

Handle PowerPoint presentations.

Use when: Reading or creating presentation files

browser-use

Automate browser interactions using Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP).

Use when: Web scraping, browser automation, testing web applications

find-skills

Discover and search available skills.

Use when: User asks “what can you do” or needs help finding appropriate skills

skill-creator

Guide for creating new custom skills.

Use when: User wants to create their own skills

Creating Custom Skills

Quick Start

  1. Create a directory: ~/.agenix/skills/my-skill/

  2. Add SKILL.md file with frontmatter

  3. Write instructions in markdown

Minimal Example

---
name: my-skill
description: Brief description of what this skill does
---

# My Skill

Use this skill when the user asks about X.

## Steps

1. First, do this
2. Then, do that
3. Finally, verify the result

## Examples

Example of expected usage...

Full Example with All Fields

---
name: database-helper
description: PostgreSQL database operations and queries
license: MIT
compatibility: Python 3.8+
allowed-tools:
  - Bash(psql:*)
  - Read
  - Write
metadata:
  author: Your Name
  version: 1.0.0
  tags:
    - database
    - postgresql
    - sql
---

# Database Helper

Use this skill when the user needs to:
- Connect to PostgreSQL databases
- Run SQL queries
- Analyze database schema
- Optimize queries

## Prerequisites

Ensure PostgreSQL client is installed:
```bash
psql --version

…


## Debugging Skills

### Check Loaded Skills

In interactive mode:

/help Available skills: pdf, xlsx, docx, pptx, browser-use, find-skills, skill-creator


### Test Skill Loading

```python
from agenix.core.skills import SkillManager

manager = SkillManager(skill_dirs=["~/.agenix/skills"])
skills = manager.list_skills()

for skill in skills:
    print(f"{skill.name}: {skill.description}")

Verify Skill Format

manager = SkillManager(skill_dirs=["~/.agenix/skills"])
skill = manager.get_skill("my-skill")

if skill:
    print(f"✅ Loaded: {skill.name}")
    print(f"Description: {skill.description}")
else:
    print("❌ Failed to load skill")

Sharing Skills

As Files

Share the skill directory:

# Package skill
tar -czf my-skill.tar.gz ~/.agenix/skills/my-skill/

# Install skill
tar -xzf my-skill.tar.gz -C ~/.agenix/skills/

Via Git

# Clone skills repository
git clone https://github.com/user/agenix-skills ~/.agenix/skills/

Include in Projects

Add to project .agenix/skills/ directory for project-specific skills.

Next Steps