The original title is: "Agent Skills Explained: How SKILL.md Files Give AI Agents Procedural Knowledge"

Short summary

Agent skills are SKILL.md files that give AI agents procedural knowledge—step-by-step instructions for performing tasks. Skills use progressive disclosure to load only names and descriptions initially, then full instructions when matched to a task. The format is an open standard adopted by Claude and Codex, but installing skills carries security risks since they can execute scripts.

• •Agent skills are SKILL.md files providing procedural knowledge to AI agents
• •Progressive disclosure loads skill metadata first, then full instructions only when needed
• •Skills differ from MCP (tool access), RAG (reference data), and fine-tuning (model weights)
• •Installing skills carries security risks—treat like installing software from trusted sources only

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.