Explore AI Agent Skills & Claude Prompts
Discover open-source agent skills for Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT, and any tool that uses SKILL.md.
Enter through keywords, occupations, creators, and GitHub sources to see what kinds of skills are emerging across domains.
Use the same catalog through the API
Connect 381,784 public skills to your own search, analytics, or agent workflow with the REST API.
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debugging-techniques
by ancolemanDebugging workflows for Python (pdb, debugpy), Go (delve), Rust (lldb), and Node.js, including container debugging (kubectl debug, ephemeral containers) and production-safe debugging techniques with distributed tracing and correlation IDs. Use when setting breakpoints, debugging containers/pods, remote debugging, or production debugging.
designing-distributed-systems
by ancolemanWhen designing distributed systems for scalability, reliability, and consistency. Covers CAP/PACELC theorems, consistency models (strong, eventual, causal), replication patterns (leader-follower, multi-leader, leaderless), partitioning strategies (hash, range, geographic), transaction patterns (saga, event sourcing, CQRS), resilience patterns (circuit breaker, bulkhead), service discovery, and caching strategies for building fault-tolerant distributed architectures.
load-balancing-patterns
by ancolemanWhen distributing traffic across multiple servers or regions, use this skill to select and configure the appropriate load balancing solution (L4/L7, cloud-managed, self-managed, or Kubernetes ingress) with proper health checks and session management.
managing-configuration
by ancolemanGuide users through creating, managing, and testing server configuration automation using Ansible. When automating server configurations, deploying applications with Ansible playbooks, managing dynamic inventories for cloud environments, or testing roles with Molecule, this skill provides idempotency patterns, secrets management with ansible-vault and HashiCorp Vault, and GitOps workflows for configuration as code.
managing-incidents
by ancolemanGuide incident response from detection to post-mortem using SRE principles, severity classification, on-call management, blameless culture, and communication protocols. Use when setting up incident processes, designing escalation policies, or conducting post-mortems.
optimizing-sql
by ancolemanOptimize SQL query performance through EXPLAIN analysis, indexing strategies, and query rewriting for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server. Use when debugging slow queries, analyzing execution plans, or improving database performance.
securing-authentication
by ancolemanAuthentication, authorization, and API security implementation. Use when building user systems, protecting APIs, or implementing access control. Covers OAuth 2.1/OIDC, JWT patterns, sessions, Passkeys/WebAuthn, RBAC/ABAC/ReBAC, policy engines (OPA, Casbin, SpiceDB), managed auth (Clerk, Auth0), self-hosted (Keycloak, Ory), and API security best practices.
using-timeseries-databases
by ancolemanTime-series database implementation for metrics, IoT, financial data, and observability backends. Use when building dashboards, monitoring systems, IoT platforms, or financial applications. Covers TimescaleDB (PostgreSQL), InfluxDB, ClickHouse, QuestDB, continuous aggregates, downsampling (LTTB), and retention policies.
configuring-firewalls
by ancolemanConfigure host-based firewalls (iptables, nftables, UFW) and cloud security groups (AWS, GCP, Azure) with practical rules for common scenarios like web servers, databases, and bastion hosts. Use when exposing services, hardening servers, or implementing network segmentation with defense-in-depth strategies.
implementing-tls
by ancolemanConfigure TLS certificates and encryption for secure communications. Use when setting up HTTPS, securing service-to-service connections, implementing mutual TLS (mTLS), or debugging certificate issues.
using-document-databases
by ancolemanDocument database implementation for flexible schema applications. Use when building content management, user profiles, catalogs, or event logging. Covers MongoDB (primary), DynamoDB, Firestore, schema design patterns, indexing strategies, and aggregation pipelines.
using-relational-databases
by ancolemanRelational database implementation across Python, Rust, Go, and TypeScript. Use when building CRUD applications, transactional systems, or structured data storage. Covers PostgreSQL (primary), MySQL, SQLite, ORMs (SQLAlchemy, Prisma, SeaORM, GORM), query builders (Drizzle, sqlc, SQLx), migrations, connection pooling, and serverless databases (Neon, PlanetScale, Turso).
Browse Agent Skills by Occupation
23 major groups · 867 SOC occupations
Browse by Category
Explore agent skills organized by their primary use case
Explore the agent skills ecosystem by occupation and creator
SkillMD is not just a keyword search box. It is an open map that organizes public skills by occupation, creator, and repository, helping you see which workflows, judgment criteria, and domain habits people are writing for AI agents.
Then follow creators and GitHub repositories back to the source: compare the skills a team maintains, whether the repo is active, and how the README frames the work before you open, install, or reuse anything.
Use it three ways: learn an unfamiliar field by occupation, study how creators organize skills, then use source context to decide what is worth opening or reusing.
01 Map a field
Browse 23 occupation groups and 867 SOC roles to learn what skills exist in adjacent domains and how they break down real work.
02 Follow creators
Use creator and repository pages to inspect maintained skill collections, recent updates, and source context before trusting a result.
03 Search with sources
Search 1.7M+ collected skills, then use occupation tags, creators, and GitHub source context to decide what is worth opening.
Start with the occupation map, then follow creators and repositories back to real code. SkillMD helps explain why a skill is worth opening, not only what it is named.
Standardizing Agent Capabilities with SKILL.md and Model Context Protocol (MCP)
In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, LLM agents (Large Language Model agents) have transitioned from simple text predictors to autonomous problem solvers. To orchestrate complex, multi-step agentic workflows, developers require a standardized format to specify agent capabilities, prompt instructions, system rules, and database bindings. This is where SKILL.md and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) have emerged as standard developer paradigms. SkillMD serves as the central directory for indexing, exploring, and sharing these critical agent configurations.
Our open-source registry currently tracks over 1.7 million collected SKILL.md configurations and system prompts. By compiling agent configurations from active developers on GitHub, we bridge the gap between prompt engineering research and production execution. Whether you are building agents with Anthropic's Claude Code, OpenAI's GPT-4, Google's Gemini, or local models using Ollama and LlamaIndex, standardized skill definitions ensure your agents behave predictably across different runtime environments.
What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard designed to connect LLMs to data sources, developer tools, and external environments. MCP establishes a bidirectional communication channel between client applications (like Cursor, Claude Desktop, or custom agent systems) and servers hosting data or capabilities. Standardizing instructions via SKILL.md enables LLMs to query databases, read local files, execute terminal commands, and integrate third-party APIs. SkillMD allows you to find ready-to-run MCP servers and prompt instructions for various occupations and technical tasks.
The Structure of a Professional SKILL.md File
A valid SKILL.md configuration is designed to be easily read by humans and parsed by LLMs. It contains precise system instructions, trigger conditions, required parameters, and execution examples. Below is the typical architectural blueprint of a professional agent skill:
- Metadata & Core Scope: Declares the name of the skill, author details, target models, and a description of the capability.
- Triggers & Intent Detection: Details semantic triggers that help the agent decide when to invoke this skill.
- System Prompts: Explicit system-level instructions that direct the agent's behavior, personality, safety guardrails, and formatting preferences.
- Capabilities & Tools: Lists the files, databases, or APIs the agent must access to complete the tasks.
- Few-Shot Examples: Demonstrates real inputs and outputs, helping the model generalize behavior through in-context learning.
Optimizing Agent Workflows for Modern LLMs
Writing effective agent skills requires deep knowledge of prompt engineering. With the release of advanced reasoning models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet, ChatGPT o1, and DeepSeek-V3, prompt templates must focus on structured thinking. Developers are encouraged to use XML tags (e.g., <thought>, <context>, and <rules>) to isolate execution boundaries. Standardized prompts prevent agents from suffering from context drift, ensuring that long-running tasks remain aligned with the initial system parameters.
Exploring by SOC Occupations and Creator Profiles
What makes SkillMD unique is its taxonomy. Instead of simple text search, we parse and organize files according to the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. This means you can discover skills written for Computer and Mathematical roles, Business and Financial operations, Legal, Design, and and Educational Instruction fields. By tracking creator profiles, developers can study how different teams organize their custom instructions, compare version updates, and fork public configs for specialized enterprise use cases.
SkillMD operates as a high-performance index running on a fast Go backend and a highly responsive Astro SSR frontend. All search queries execute in milliseconds, featuring smart debouncing to prevent multiple API requests while keeping user data secure. Join our community of developers to standardize your AI agent instructions and optimize your LLM prompting workflows today.
Frequently Asked Questions
A practical guide to agent skills: what they are, how to inspect them, and how SkillMD helps you explore the ecosystem.