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What is a Skill

Understand the concept, purpose, and structure of Skills in Vtrix.

What is a Skill

A Skill is an on-demand instruction unit loaded by an agent. It contains operational instructions, reference documentation, and execution scripts. Rather than relying on a single monolithic system prompt stuffed with everything, an agent retrieves relevant Skills at inference time — loading only what the current task actually needs.

Agent Skills Open Standard

Skills follow the Agent Skills Open Standard — a shared format designed to work across tools. A Skill is a directory with SKILL.md as its entry point, plus optional supporting files:

my-skill/
├── SKILL.md           # Entry point — yaml frontmatter + markdown instructions
├── references/        # Domain docs, API specs — loaded on demand
│   └── api-docs.md
├── scripts/           # Scripts the agent can execute
│   └── helper.py
├── examples/          # Examples showing expected output format
│   └── sample.md
└── templates/         # Templates for the agent to fill in
    └── template.md

Skills on Vtrix natively support this standard, and are equally compatible with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and any other tool that follows the spec.

Tips

  • Write a clear description: The description is what the agent sees in its tool list. A vague “docs” is useless — “API documentation for the payment service, including endpoint list, authentication method, and error codes” gives the agent what it needs to decide when to load the Skill
  • Keep Skills focused: One Skill, one topic. Instead of one giant Skill, split into independent units like code-review, security-checklist, and api-reference — the agent loads only what it needs at the moment
  • Use supporting files for heavy content: Put large reference docs, API specs, and detailed examples under references/ or examples/. Keep the main instructions concise and reference those files when detail is needed
  • Use relative paths between files: Reference supporting files with relative paths like [See reference](references/api-docs.md). The agent can load them on demand via skill_get, and local agents can access them directly via the filesystem