Agents & skills
An agent is a system that plans and acts with some autonomy; a skill is a reusable, versionable unit of instructions and workflow. Below is a shared vocabulary for when to lean on agents vs when to codify skills.
What is an agent
A goal-driven program that understands context, decomposes work, and calls tools (editor, shell, browser, MCP, etc.), adapting across steps. Best for open-ended exploration, triage, and integration across sources.
What is a skill
Often a SKILL.md (or similar) describing intent, I/O, guardrails, and checklists so different agents behave consistently. Best for repeatable process, reviewability, compliance trails, and team alignment.
Favor the agent when
Goals shift often; you need judgment (incidents, research, conversational clarification); you rely on live tool feedback; or the task is one-off exploration—run it first, then decide whether to extract a skill.
Favor a skill when
The same class of task repeats (review checklists, ship gates, license scans); deliverables have a stable shape (YAML, tables, report sections); you need reuse and versioning; or the workflow is tied to CI and repo conventions.
In practice they combine: agents orchestrate execution; skills supply pluggable step templates. Browse the full skill index; for business-style “when to trigger, when done” narratives see more cases.
Popular skill topics
A short list of high-traffic, cross-team entries—open the detail page directly. Use the full index for every category.
Kubernetes manifests
Deployments, Services, probes, and resource limits—production-ready YAML.
SBOM & dependency inventory
Formats, generation, and vulnerability linkage for supply-chain security.
Changelog generation
User-facing or internal release notes from commits and PRs.
Open-source license compliance
License detection, conflicts, and approval paths for legal and engineering.
Diagram as code
Mermaid, PlantUML, and keeping architecture diagrams in-repo.
More skills
Browse every category and entry at the skill hub.
Cases & case studies
Place skills in real workflows: each case states triggers, outputs, and done criteria—easy to chain with multiple skills.
Code review & pre-merge checks
Review lists, risk points, and merge gates—pairs with review-oriented skills.
Dependency & license compliance scan
Dependency trees, conflicts, and reports—connects to SBOM and compliance skills.
CI/CD & release notes
Change summaries and release records—ties to changelog and release workflows.
Unit test coverage gap remediation
Backfill tests, edge cases, coverage targets, and gap lists.
API contract and interface documentation sync
OpenAPI/contract changes, docs vs implementation consistency.
Database migration scripts and rollback plan
DDL/DML, lock risks, rollback SQL, verification steps.
Incident RCA and impact triage
Timelines, dependencies, user impact, hypotheses—pairs with runbooks and on-call skills.
Dependency vulnerabilities and CVE triage
CVSS, exploitability, patches, mitigations—works with SBOM and security-scan skills.