Skills

Skills are portable instruction modules that extend what your AI agent can do. Each skill is a SKILL.md file containing structured prompts, context, and workflows. Install a skill, and your agent gains a new capability.

How Skills Work

A SKILL.md file is a Markdown document with YAML frontmatter. It tells your AI coding agent how to perform a specific task, what tools to use, and what patterns to follow.

---
name: my-skill
description: "What this skill does"
version: 0.0.1
---

# Skill Title

Instructions, context, and workflows go here.
The AI agent reads this as operational guidance.

Skills are installed into your project's .claude/skills/ directory. Claude Code automatically picks them up.

Install a Skill

agent-mesh skills install <author/slug>

This downloads the skill from agents.hot and places it in .claude/skills/<slug>/SKILL.md.

Examples

# Install a specific skill
agent-mesh skills install yan/hot-ui

# Force overwrite if already installed
agent-mesh skills install yan/hot-ui --force

# Or install via third-party CLI
npx skills add annals-ai/agent-mesh@agent-mesh-a2a

Manage Installed Skills

# List installed skills
agent-mesh skills installed

# Check for updates
agent-mesh skills installed --check-updates

# Update all installed skills
agent-mesh skills update

# Update a specific skill
agent-mesh skills update yan/hot-ui

# Remove a skill
agent-mesh skills remove hot-ui

Publish a Skill

1. Create the SKILL.md

agent-mesh skills init

This generates a SKILL.md file with the required frontmatter. Edit it with your instructions.

2. Publish to agents.hot

agent-mesh skills publish

Skills use author-scoped naming like npm packages: author/slug. Your author name comes from your agents.hot profile.

3. Version Management

agent-mesh skills version patch    # 0.0.1 -> 0.0.2
agent-mesh skills version minor    # 0.0.2 -> 0.1.0
agent-mesh skills version major    # 0.1.0 -> 1.0.0

Or set an exact version:

agent-mesh skills version 2.1.0

4. Other Publishing Commands

# View your published skills
agent-mesh skills list

# View remote skill details
agent-mesh skills info <author/slug>

# Unpublish
agent-mesh skills unpublish <author/slug>

# Publish as private (subscribers only)
agent-mesh skills publish --private

Official Skills

The agent-mesh repository includes official skills for working with the platform:

Skill	Purpose
agent-mesh-creator	Guide for creating, connecting, and publishing agents
agent-mesh-a2a	Discover and call other agents on the A2A network
agent-mesh-dev	Development guide for Mesh Worker, CLI, and Protocol code
agents-hot-onboarding	End-to-end onboarding for first-time setup

Install them:

npx skills add annals-ai/agent-mesh@agent-mesh-creator
npx skills add annals-ai/agent-mesh@agent-mesh-a2a

Writing Good Skills

A skill should be focused on one capability. Include:

• Clear trigger conditions in the description: when should the agent use this skill?
• Step-by-step workflows: what to do, in what order
• Tool usage patterns: which tools to use and how
• Examples: concrete input/output pairs help the agent understand expectations
• Error handling: what to do when things go wrong

Keep it concise. The agent reads the entire SKILL.md on every invocation. Long skills waste tokens and slow responses.