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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agentic-rob-pike
by tmdgusyaRob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming — a decision framework that prevents premature optimization and enforces measurement-driven development. Use when the user says "optimize", "slow", "performance", "bottleneck", "speed up", "make faster", "too slow", or any request to improve code speed/efficiency. Also use when you notice yourself about to suggest a performance optimization without measurement data. This is a thinking discipline, not a tooling workflow.
agentic-karpathy
by tmdgusyaBehavioral guardrails to prevent common LLM coding mistakes — enforces surgical changes, assumption verification, and scope discipline before and during implementation. Use when implementing features, modifying code, or when you notice yourself about to make changes without reading the existing code first.
agentic-goal
by tmdgusyaPrimary execution workflow for durable /goal runtime. Use when a Goal Contract is active or when the user asks to execute, continue, verify, or complete a goal.
agentic-clarification
by tmdgusyaUse when a user's request is vague, ambiguous, or underspecified. Launches an iterative Q&A loop to resolve ambiguity, using an explorer subagent only when codebase context is needed. Outputs a Goal Contract for the durable /goal runtime. Triggers on "I want to...", "I need...", "let's build...", "can you help me...", "we should...", or any request where the full scope isn't immediately clear.
agentic-systematic-debugging
by tmdgusyaUse when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior. Enforces a strict reproduce-first, root-cause-first, failing-test-first debugging workflow before fixing.
agentic-simplify
by tmdgusyaReview changed code for reuse opportunities, quality issues, and inefficiencies using three parallel review agents, then fix any issues found. Triggers when the user says "agentic-simplify", "clean up the code", "review the changes", or after goal implementation when code quality verification is needed.
agentic-brainstorming
by tmdgusyaInteractive idea development through guided Q&A dialogue. This skill helps users clarify and develop their ideas by asking targeted questions, expanding on possibilities, and producing a structured markdown document capturing the essence of their thinking. Triggers: "brainstorm", "idea", "organize ideas", "I want to organize my thoughts", "whatever comes to mind"
milestone-planning
by tmdgusyaDecomposes complex, multi-day tasks into optimized milestones using parallel reviewer agents (ultraplan). Spawns 5 independent reviewers that analyze the problem from different angles, then synthesizes their findings into a milestone dependency DAG. Triggers when the user says "plan milestones", "break this into milestones", "ultraplan", or when long-run harness needs milestone generation.
karpathy
by tmdgusyaBehavioral guardrails to prevent common LLM coding mistakes — enforces surgical changes, assumption verification, and scope discipline before and during implementation. Use when implementing features, modifying code, or when you notice yourself about to make changes without reading the existing code first.
long-run
by tmdgusyaOrchestrates multi-day execution of complex tasks through milestones. Each milestone goes through plan-crafting, run-plan (worker-validator), and review-work phases with checkpoint/recovery. Triggers when the user says "long run", "start long run", "execute milestones", or "run all milestones".
plan-crafting
by tmdgusyaUse when a task's scope is clear and multi-step implementation is needed, before touching code. Triggered after clarification is complete, or when the user explicitly requests plan creation with a clear prompt.
review-work
by tmdgusyaUse after run-plan completes to independently verify the implementation. Reads only the plan document and inspects the codebase from scratch — information-isolated from the execution context. Produces a structured review document with PASS/FAIL verdict. Triggers when the user says "review the work", "verify the implementation", "check if the plan was executed correctly".
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.