Home ยท Guides

Guides

Plain answers to common questions about agent skills and the instruction files AI agents read, each with commands that work and figures from our own data. The data behind the figures is published in full in the reports, and studies built on it are on the blog.

How to pin an agent skill to an exact version

Pin agent skills by content hash, keep the pin in a lockfile, check for upstream changes on purpose and read the diff first. Real commands and output.

AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, SKILL.md and Cursor rules: which file does what

What AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, SKILL.md, Cursor rules, DESIGN.md and llms.txt do, which agents read each, and how to keep AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md in sync.

Are agent skills safe? What to check before you install one

What to check in an agent skill before you install it, a command that finds curl piped into a shell, and what an audit of public SKILL.md files flags.

Where to find agent skills: directories, marketplaces and package managers

skills.sh, SkillsMP, ClawHub, gh skill, Anthropic's marketplaces and markdownregistry, compared from their own docs: listing, install, audit, versions.

SKILL.md format: the required frontmatter fields, and skills vs MCP

The two required SKILL.md fields and their rules, how many public skills break them, how skills load, and when to use a skill or an MCP server.

Agent skills for a team: one version for everyone, private skills and publishing

Keep a team on the same agent skills with a committed lockfile, install exact versions, share Claude Code skills, and publish your own. Real output.

From the blog