ClaudeMap

Agent Skills (Open Standard)

The open Agent Skills standard — SKILL.md folders any agent can load, governed by the Agentic AI Foundation since 2026-10-22.

SDKs & Toolingofficialspecagent-skillsstandard
Visit projectagentskills/agentskills

The vendor-neutral home of the skill format this map's skills track is built on: a skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file (name and description at minimum, plus optional scripts, references, assets) that agents load through progressive disclosure. Developed while building Claude Code, published as an open standard in December 2025, and donated by Anthropic to the Agentic AI Foundation (under the Linux Foundation) on October 22, 2026 — along with the name, logo, GitHub organization and agentskills.io domain. Per the announcement: 70+ agent platforms have integrated it (ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code among them), with ~1 million skills published and nearly 280 million installed.

What it does

  • One folder, one SKILL.md: name and description are the only required metadata; scripts, references and assets ride along — loadable by any skills-compatible agent
  • Progressive disclosure in three stages: discovery (name/description only), activation (full SKILL.md read when a task matches), execution (bundled code and references loaded as needed)
  • Governed by the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation as of October 22, 2026 — the same foundation that holds MCP; lead maintainers are David Soria Parra and Mahesh Murag, with engineers from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and other companies maintaining as individuals
  • 70+ platforms integrated per Anthropic's donation announcement (ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, VS Code among them); ~1 million skills published, nearly 280 million installed
  • Apache 2.0 for code, CC-BY-4.0 for docs; the proposed roadmap covers versioned releases, a formal proposal process, and security guidance for people who write and install skills

When to use it

Read this before packaging any skill for distribution: target the standard's folder layout and frontmatter and one skill serves Claude Code plus the other 70+ platforms. The Client Showcase lists implementations for platform teams deciding how to load skills. Frontmatter fields, progressive disclosure and packaging questions are settled by the spec, not by any vendor's product docs.

Getting started

No install — it's a specification. Read the spec at https://agentskills.io/specification, browse implementations in the Client Showcase at https://agentskills.io/clients, and join the project Discord (https://discord.com/invite/MKPE9g8aUy) to comment on proposed specification changes.

Things to know

The transfer is fresh (announced October 22, 2026): the spec repo's README still reads "originally developed by Anthropic" and does not yet mention the AAIF — governance migration is in progress, and the donation covers the standard's assets, not Anthropic's product docs (platform.claude.com) or the anthropics/skills example repo. The roadmap in the announcement is a proposal, not a ratified process.

Repository

agentskills/agentskills

Charted

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