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A skill owns reusable agent instructions. It can include reference files, scripts, and assets. Skills exist because some agent behavior is larger than one prompt but smaller than a new runtime primitive. A skill packages a repeatable way of working, such as code review, data analysis, incident response, or repository maintenance.

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Characteristics

  • SKILL.md contains the instructions and metadata.
  • References provide supporting material the agent can load.
  • Scripts provide optional executable helpers.
  • Assets provide optional files the skill can use.
  • allowed-tools records which tools the skill expects to use. It is descriptive metadata, not an authorization boundary.

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Boundary

The agent owns the interaction and decides when to use a skill. The skill owns the instructions and supporting files for that capability. Tools still own actions. A skill never widens or narrows the tools a run can call. The Agent Skills specification defines allowed-tools as tools pre-approved to run without prompting, so Veryfront records the declaration and does not enforce it. Configure the agent’s tools to control what a run can do. This keeps task-specific agent behavior discoverable without hiding it inside a large system prompt.

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Wrong fit

Do not use a skill for callable work that should be a tool, background work that should be a task, or multi-step process state that should be a workflow. For implementation steps, see Skills.