Anthropic donates the Agent Skills standard to a neutral foundation

An agent is an AI program that reads information and uses tools to carry out work. A skill is a folder explaining how to do a particular task. Rather than retraining a model, it supplies procedures and resources to read when work begins.

The minimum is a SKILL.md file with a name, description and instructions. It can also contain code, references and templates. Format specification

Imagine a fictional shop creating a monthly sales-report skill.

Loading every long skill document every time would add unrelated material. The standard describes discovering relevance by name and description, reading the instructions when needed, then opening supporting resources. How skills work

When a new template arrives, the shop can update the file and instructions together. Writing “compare matching periods” doesn't ensure every result is correct. Example data can reveal whether periods, units and missing-data labels are actually handled as intended.

A common format makes instructions easier to share. But writing “read the sales system” doesn't give a new tool its integration or account permissions. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, connects AI applications to external data and functions. An MCP connection can provide tools needed by a skill's procedure. MCP introduction

This announcement moves the standard toward shared governance outside one company. It doesn't certify every skill or change all skills to one license. The specification lets individual skills declare licenses and environment requirements.

Before adopting an outside skill, read its instructions, license, bundled code and required permissions. Skills can contain executable code, so treating every folder as merely a document misses part of what it can do. How code is bundled