What are Skills?

Specialized knowledge, instantly loaded

Skills are markdown files that teach your AI assistant how to do specific things. When you install a skill, your AI gains the context it needs to help with that domain: the right patterns, best practices, and common pitfalls to avoid.

Want Claude to build scroll animations? Install the GSAP skill. Need it to generate PDFs? There's a skill for that. Each skill is curated knowledge that your AI can reference immediately.

Skills vs MCP servers

You might be wondering: why skills instead of MCP servers? MCP servers connect your AI to live systems: databases, APIs, real-time data. Skills are different. They're static files that work without any infrastructure.

Skills take a fundamentally different approach. Instead of running external servers, skills are static markdown files that provide instructions and context directly to your AI assistant. This makes them lightweight, portable, and instantly available without any server setup or maintenance.

When to use each

Use skills when you need to teach your AI how to do something: following framework best practices, writing code in a particular style, or understanding domain-specific concepts. Skills excel at guidance, patterns, and workflows.

Use MCP servers when your AI needs to interact with external systems, fetch real-time data, or perform actions that require API access. MCPs are ideal for databases, third-party services, and live connections.

How it works

Skills are markdown files that get installed into your AI assistant's configuration directory. When you ask for help, your assistant reads the relevant skill to understand how to approach the problem.

Each skill contains structured instructions, examples, and best practices. Your AI uses this to provide more accurate and consistent help for that specific domain.

Skills are installed to your assistant's config directory. Takes about 5 seconds.

Why skills?