Agent skills.
Also known as: Skills, SKILL.md
An agent skill is a reusable set of instructions that tells an AI agent how to approach a particular task. It can also include examples, reference material, templates, and code. If you’re familiar with an Excel macro, think of it as a way to save a process so you don’t have to explain it from scratch every time. A skill can help an agent be more consistent when doing the same kind of work, whether it’s your agent or someone else’s in the team. And if you got AI to do something brilliant last Tuesday but can’t quite remember how, a skill can help you capture the method for next time.
In the wild
“Skills can also bundle scripts, reference materials, templates, and other resources.”
Seen here: Agent Skills overview
For AI users
Skills can be made by you, someone else in your organisation, or an outside developer. You can find them in skill libraries, sometimes for free and sometimes to buy. Before you switch one on, check who made it, what it is supposed to do, and what information or tools the agent could access while using it. Treat an unfamiliar skill like a browser extension or an Excel macro. If you can’t inspect it yourself, ask your IT or security team to check it. Test it on a low-risk task first, without sensitive information, and check the result. A skill can contain harmful instructions or code, even if its description sounds useful.
For business leaders
Skills can help teams share the instructions, context, and methods that make their AI useful. A well-designed skill could help a whole team produce work more consistently, instead of relying on one person remembering the perfect prompt. But skills are also a route into the organisation. They might come from another team with different ways of working, or from outside the business altogether. Put an approval process in place, check what each skill can ask the agent to access or do, and test it before it reaches important systems or sensitive data. Give important skills an owner, keep them up to date, and make sure more than one person knows how to maintain them. It can be a risk when the skill that holds your team’s way of working sits with one person, or when staff copy business instructions into an external tool without approval.