acquiring-skills_skill

Overview

This skill guides safe discovery and installation of external skills to extend agent capabilities. It helps decide when a community skill is appropriate, how to obtain it from trusted sources, and how to install and inspect it before use. Follow it to bootstrap solutions like browser testing, PDF generation, or document pipelines instead of building from scratch.

How this skill works

When a task looks like one a specialized skill can solve, ask the user for permission to search community skill repositories. If approved, clone the remote skill tree to a temporary directory, copy the chosen skill into the appropriate local location (agent, project, or global), and remove temporary files. Always read and inspect any scripts before executing them and run only after user approval and clear understanding.

When to use it

• User asks for a capability likely covered by a community skill (web testing, PDF generation, document workflows).
• You want to bootstrap development with an existing, tested implementation rather than coding from scratch.
• User requests available community skills or asks to extend the agent with new capabilities.
• You need a quick way to add common tooling (Playwright tests, formatters, converters) to an agent or project.

Best practices

• Always ask the user for permission before searching or downloading skills from untrusted sources.
• Limit downloads to trusted repositories (e.g., official community skill collections) when possible.
• Inspect all scripts and network/file operations in the skill before executing anything.
• Install skills agent-scoped by default; use project-scoped for repo-specific needs and global only when all agents should inherit.
• Clone shallow to a temp directory, copy only the needed skill, then delete the temp clone.

Example use cases

• User asks: 'Help me test my React app's UI' — ask to search for a webapp-testing skill and install it agent-scoped.
• User needs automated PDF report generation — find a PDF generation skill, inspect scripts, then integrate into the project directory.
• Add a project-specific skill for data conversion by copying it into the .skills/ folder and running tests locally.
• Quickly bootstrap Playwright-based browser tests by installing a community testing skill and reviewing example scripts.