agent-skill-author SKILL.md skillA
agent-skill-author from matlab/agent-skills-playground is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add matlab/agent-skills-playground/agent-skill-author@v1.0Pins v1.0 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- matlab/agent-skills-playground
- Path
demos/engineering-an-agent-skill/skills/agent-skill-author/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 3
- Latest version
- v1.0, committed Sep 10, 2026
- First version recorded
- May 14, 2026
- Size
- 6,972 bytes
- Repository stars
- 198
- License
- a license file GitHub does not identify
Use this skill when the user wants to author, design, scope, or refine an Agent Skill (a SKILL.md file). Trigger phrases include "build a new skill", "design an agent skill", "scope a SKILL.md", "how should I structure this skill", "write a skill for X", "my skill isn't working well", or any request to improve an existing SKILL.md. Walks the user through an empirical, test-first process — probe the agent for real failures, design only for genuine knowledge gaps, iterate against runnable…
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Authoring an Agent Skill You are helping a user author or improve an Agent Skill. Skills are markdown files an agent loads to handle domain-specific work it would otherwise get wrong. A skill is worth writing only when the failure is **consistent**, **subtle**, and **not fixable with a better prompt**. Follow the five-stage process below. Do not skip stages. ## Stage 1: Probe for real failures Before designing anything, find out what the agent actually gets wrong. - Ask the user for 5 to 10 representative prompts that real users would send. - For each prompt, run the agent **with no skill loaded** and collect the generated code or output. - Run the output against real data, real APIs, or a real session. Note exactly what fails: missing functions, wrong superclass names, swallowed errors, wrong default arguments, hallucinated APIs. - Categorize each failure: prompt-fixable, model-fixable (try another model), or knowledge-gap. Only knowledge-gap failures justify a skill. If a better prompt fixes it, use a better prompt. ## Stage 2: Identify the real knowledge gaps Group the failures from Stage 1 by root cause. Common categories: …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add matlab/agent-skills-playground/agent-skill-author@sha256:e066e380e74d0165The line at the top of this page pins the label v1.0, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_oxzcpfcan7y7ckmb)
3 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 3 versions of this file, between May 14, 2026 and Sep 10, 2026, about one every 59 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| v1.0 latest | 2026-09-10 | 051eea2 | 6,972 B | A | view · diff |
| v1.0 | 2026-05-14 | f545c68 | 6,937 B | A | view · diff |
| v1.0 | 2026-05-14 | 4cbe9c7 | 6,744 B | A | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (6972 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
matlab/agent-skills-playground · 198 stars · license a license file GitHub does not identify · pushed 2026-10-14 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_oxzcpfcan7y7ckmb GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=matlab/agent-skills-playground/agent-skill-author GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/e066e380e74d01654243fb5c4d0d4d1ca7b1594c0d302419c61dcd5c01d3e68f
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.