What is a skill?
Understanding Agent Skills for biomedical professionals
Agent Skills are reusable packages that provide AI assistants with domain-specific expertise.
Each Skill contains detailed instructions and optional resources (templates, protocols, etc.) that the assistant uses autonomously to complete a task. Think of a Skill like a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) you would create for a lab assistant. It captures how to approach specific types of research: the methodology to follow, the variables to check, and the format for results.
Why use Skills
Unlike prompts, which are one-off instructions for a single conversation, Skills persist across sessions. You define your methodology once, and the assistant applies it consistently whenever that type of task arises.
Consistency across the lab
A protocol review Skill ensures the same checklist gets applied whether the work is done Monday morning or Friday evening, by you or a colleague. The methodology is encoded in the Skill itself.
Knowledge that stays
Expertise that would otherwise exist only in someone's head can be captured and shared. When a senior PI develops an effective approach to grant writing or data analysis, that approach can become a Skill that benefits the entire team.
Less repetition
Instead of explaining preferences and requirements at the start of each conversation, the Skill provides that context automatically. The agent already knows how you want the work done.
What a Skill contains
At its core, a Skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file:
The SKILL.md file is a simple text document with a small header (the Skill's name and description) followed by the actual instructions. The agent reads the header to know when the Skill might be relevant, then loads the full instructions when needed.
An open standard Agent Skills were created by Anthropic and initially designed for their Claude model. However, the format became an open standard that other providers are beginning to adopt.
Portability is key
A Skill written today for Claude should work with other AI assistants as they add support for the format. Rather than building workflows locked to a single vendor, Skills aim to be a common language for teaching AI agents how to handle specialized tasks.