Agent Skills
What skills are, how they’re used, and how to make your own.
Slides
Outline
- (25m) Agent skills
- What skills are, how agents load them, and how to write a good one
- Your Turn
_exercises/21_skills-1: give your Blockbuster agent a skill. List it in the system prompt and add a tool that reads it. - Your Turn
_exercises/22_skills-2: fix a first-draft skill with common problems, then re-run the task with the improved skill
Further reading
- Agent Skills specification — the open format: directory structure,
SKILL.mdfrontmatter, progressive disclosure. - Best practices for skill creators — scoping, calibrating detail, and patterns that make skills work.
- Skills — Posit Assistant docs — where skills live, slash commands, and the built-in
create-skillskill. - AGENTS.md vs Skills vs MCP servers — when each layer is the right tool, from the Posit open-source AI newsletter.