Skills & Recipes

A compiled skill is app operating knowledge written for a coding agent. The board holds the convention, and the code plugin writes it into the repo as IDE-native files.

Compiled skills, not insight skills

Note

Not the skills that define an analysis: those are insight skills.

Compiled skills are an outbound part of an app board, alongside work items.

The Skills facet

Every app board has a Skills screen, opened from the board menu (⋯) → Skills. Its What this app receives preview shows the resolved set the repo gets.

Two ways in

A new app starts with no skills. Add skills offers two ways to add them:

• Start from a recipe. A recipe is a named, ordered set of related skills, with a short index saying why each is there. Recipes matched to your app's type come first, and one click applies the set.
• Browse the skill library. Pick skills one at a time, by category, search or what suits your app's type, and preview each in full before adding it.

Some skills take parameters or allow multiple instances; set those as you add the skill. A recipe adds only what's missing and doesn't override choices you already made.

What a compiled skill contains

A skill can ship more than SKILL.md:

• Reference files: supporting documents under the skill's own folder that the agent loads on demand.
• Executable scripts: a scripts/ directory for deterministic steps such as a check, scaffold or transform, written with the executable bit set and delivered verbatim. Scripts read their inputs from argv/env.
• Sources and further reading: links to the external documentation the skill draws on.

How they reach the repo

Developers pull the bundle with /skills in the code plugin:

/skills            # compile the bundle into the repo
/skills --status   # read-only: up to date? changed upstream? locally edited?

The command preserves local edits. A lock manifest (pmap-skills.lock.json) records a hash of every managed file; if you edited a SKILL.md, reference or script, the command leaves it alone and reports it. The agent never edits these files.

Commit the compiled skills and the lock so the whole team shares them across sessions and hosts.

Tip

Skill scripts need a current plugin build. If /skills reports that some files "need a newer plugin", run /update and re-run it. Prose and references sync either way.

The org-level Skills Library

Settings has a read-only Skills library of everything published to your organization, with Skills and Recipes tabs. A skill shows its full description, the parameters an app will be asked for and the pinned source. A recipe shows its skills in apply order, with the author's note on each.

Overrides

Note

Authoring or overriding a skill needs the Pro plan. Turning library skills on and off, setting their parameters and reverting an override work on every plan.

A skill resolves from two layers, and the more specific layer wins:

Editing a library skill creates a copy for this app. Revert to default drops the copy and returns to the shared version. The repo receives only the resolved result.

What's next