Skills

Procedural knowledge the agent learns and reuses. A skill is a markdown file that teaches the agent how to do something — not facts, but how-to.

Directory structure

Skills live in ~/.abtars/skills/:

skills/
├── core/         # Bundled with abTARS (read-only)
├── self/         # Agent-created (agent-writable)
├── custom/       # Operator-provided
└── downloaded/   # From marketplace

Directory	Who writes	Editable by agent
core/	abTARS install/update	No
self/	The agent itself	Yes
custom/	You (the operator)	No
downloaded/	Marketplace fetch	No

How skills work

1. On boot, abTARS builds a skill catalog — a compact list of all available skills (name + description + tags)
2. The catalog is injected into the system prompt as guidance
3. When the model needs a skill, it reads the full SKILL.md on demand
4. The catalog guidance tells the model when to create or patch skills based on repeated patterns

The agent doesn't load every skill into context — just the catalog. Full skill content is pulled only when relevant.

SKILL.md format

---
name: deploy-peer-b
description: Deploy abTARS to the Mac mini via SSH
tags: [deploy, peer-b, ssh]
related: [deploy-kp, watchdog]
---

## Steps

1. SSH into peer-b...
2. Pull latest...
...

YAML frontmatter defines metadata. The markdown body is the actual procedure.

Agent skill management

The agent can manage its own skills (in self/ only):

Tool	Purpose
skill_create	Create a new skill from learned procedure
skill_update	Rewrite an existing skill
skill_patch	Partial update (add/modify a section)
skill_remove	Delete a skill

The agent creates skills when it notices it's repeating a procedure — the catalog guidance prompts this behavior.

Usage tracking

Each skill has a .stats.json sidecar tracking how often it's used:

{
  "uses": 14,
  "lastUsed": "2026-05-20T09:30:00Z",
  "created": "2026-04-10T14:00:00Z"
}

Commands

/skill          Reload the skill catalog (picks up new/changed files)