Five patterns distilled from Skills at OpenAI, Google Labs, obra, and more.

What Is a Skill?

A Skill is a folder centered around a SKILL.md file, using YAML frontmatter + Markdown body format. When an LLM determines a Skill is needed, it invokes the skill tool to load it. The entire content of SKILL.md is injected into the conversation context as a tool-result, and the LLM autonomously decides how to execute the instructions.

my-skill/ ├── SKILL.md # Main file (required) ├── scripts/ # Executable scripts (optional) ├── references/ # Detailed reference docs (optional, load on demand) ├── resources/ # Templates, checklists, etc. (optional) └── examples/ # Examples (optional)

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Key Mechanism: A Skill is essentially “knowledge injection” — it doesn’t dynamically generate new tools.…