protologue

Agent Skills

Also called skills, SKILL.md, progressive disclosure.

Agent skills are packaged folders of instructions, scripts, and reference files, each anchored by a SKILL.md file with a name and description, that an agent loads only when a task calls for them.

Description

Only each skill's short description sits in the agent's context at startup. The full instructions are read when relevant, and supporting files are opened only if needed, a pattern called progressive disclosure. This lets an agent carry many specialized procedures without filling its context window, and lets organizations package their own workflows for reuse.

Sources

  1. Anthropic (2025). Equipping agents for the real world with Agent Skills.

Cite this entry

Protologue. (2026). Agent Skills. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.4.0, PTL-0148). https://protologue.com/t/agent-skills/

BibTeX
@misc{protologue_agent_skills,
  title = {Agent Skills},
  author = {{Protologue}},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques, v1.4.0},
  note = {Entry PTL-0148},
  url = {https://protologue.com/t/agent-skills/}
}

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