explaingit

addyosmani/agent-skills

📈 Trending43,328ShellAudience · developerComplexity · 1/5ActiveLicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

A collection of 20 structured workflow guides for AI coding assistants that enforce disciplined engineering practices, specs, testing, security checks, and code review, instead of jumping straight to coding.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Agent Skills))
    What it does
      Workflow guides for AI
      Enforces best practices
      Prevents shortcuts
    Workflow phases
      Define requirements
      Plan the work
      Write code
      Verify and test
      Review changes
      Ship to production
    How to use
      Slash commands
      Install to AI tools
      Add to system prompts
    Key features
      20 structured skills
      Verification checkpoints
      Anti-pattern warnings
      Markdown format

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Guide an AI coding assistant through writing a detailed spec before implementing a feature.

USE CASE 2

Ensure an AI assistant runs security checks and tests before proposing code changes.

USE CASE 3

Set up automated code review workflows where the AI follows a checklist of verification steps.

USE CASE 4

Train an AI tool to break large tasks into small, testable increments instead of monolithic changes.

Tech stack

ShellMarkdown

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
Use freely for any purpose including commercial, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

In plain English

Agent Skills is a collection of structured workflow guides designed to be fed to AI coding assistants, programs that help developers write, test, and ship software. The problem it addresses is that AI coding tools, left to their own defaults, often skip the steps a careful human engineer would follow: writing a spec before touching code, breaking work into small testable pieces, running security checks, or doing a proper review before merging a change. Each "skill" in the collection is a Markdown document (a plain text file with simple formatting) that spells out a specific workflow with clear steps, verification checkpoints, and common anti-patterns to avoid. There are 20 skills total, organized around the phases of building software: defining what to build, planning the work, writing the code, verifying it works, reviewing it, and shipping it. Seven slash commands (short instructions like "/spec" or "/test") activate the right skills automatically at each phase. You would use this when you are working with an AI coding assistant and want it to behave more like a disciplined senior engineer rather than jumping straight to writing code. The skills install into supported tools by adding files to specific directories or running a plugin command. The repository itself is written in Shell and the skills are plain Markdown, so they work with any AI agent that accepts system prompt files or instruction documents.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Install agent-skills into my AI coding assistant and show me how to use the /spec command to write a requirements document before coding.
Prompt 2
I'm using an AI assistant for development, how do I add these workflow skills so it follows a proper testing and review process?
Prompt 3
Show me the anti-patterns in the agent-skills collection and explain how they help prevent common mistakes when working with AI code generation.
Prompt 4
How do I customize these Markdown workflow guides to match my team's engineering standards and integrate them into my AI tool?
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.