Skills

A skill is a folder of instructions the model loads when a task calls for it, in the Agent Skills format. Only each skill’s name and description sit in the system prompt, so you can install many without filling the context.

Where skills live

• .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md in the project, or
• ~/.anchor/skills/<name>/SKILL.md for all your projects.

When both have a skill with the same name, the project’s wins. /skills lists them.

Writing a skill

---
name: release-notes
description: Write release notes from git history. Use when asked for release notes or a changelog.
---
1. Find the previous tag with `git describe --tags --abbrev=0`.
2. List the commits since then with `git log <tag>..HEAD --oneline`.
3. Group them under Features, Fixes and Other, following `template.md` in this skill's folder.

Field	Required	Meaning
name	yes	Must match the folder name. Lowercase letters, digits and single hyphens.
description	yes	What it does and when to use it. Up to 1,024 characters.

Write the description for the model: it decides from this alone whether to load the skill.

How the model uses a skill

When a task matches a description, the model calls the skill tool with the skill’s name. That returns the body of SKILL.md, the skill’s folder path, and a list of the other files in it.

• The model reads reference files with read_file. Files in installed skill folders can be read without asking, even when they’re outside the working directory.
• It runs scripts with shell, through the same approvals as any other command. There’s no separate script runner that skips the checks.
• Secret files in a skill folder are still denied, and a skill whose SKILL.md is a symlink to a secret file is skipped.