Skills

Skills describe what your agent can do. They are part of the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol and enable agent discovery — other agents and systems can query your agent's capabilities before interacting with it.

---

Defining Skills

Add skills to your agent's TOML frontmatter using the [[skills]] array:

---
name = "research_agent"
description = "Research assistant that finds and summarizes information"

[model_settings]
model = "gpt-4.1-mini"

[tools]
external = ["*"]

[[skills]]
id = "web_search"
name = "Web Search"
description = "Search the web for current information on any topic"
tags = ["search", "research"]
examples = ["Find the latest news about AI regulations", "Search for React 19 migration guides"]

[[skills]]
id = "summarize"
name = "Summarization"
description = "Create concise summaries of long-form content"
tags = ["writing", "analysis"]
examples = ["Summarize this article in 3 bullet points"]
---

# ROLE
You are a research assistant...

---

Skill Properties

Property	Type	Required	Description
id	string	Yes	Unique identifier for the skill
name	string	Yes	Human-readable skill name
description	string	Yes	What the skill does
tags	string[]	No	Categorization tags for filtering
examples	string[]	No	Example prompts that trigger this skill
input_modes	string[]	No	Accepted input types (overrides agent defaults)
output_modes	string[]	No	Output types produced (overrides agent defaults)

---

Discovery via Agent Card

Skills are exposed through the A2A Agent Card endpoint. When another system queries your agent, it sees the skills listed:

GET /agents/research_agent/.well-known/agent.json

{
  "name": "research_agent",
  "description": "Research assistant that finds and summarizes information",
  "skills": [
    {
      "id": "web_search",
      "name": "Web Search",
      "description": "Search the web for current information on any topic",
      "tags": ["search", "research"],
      "examples": [
        "Find the latest news about AI regulations",
        "Search for React 19 migration guides"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "summarize",
      "name": "Summarization",
      "description": "Create concise summaries of long-form content",
      "tags": ["writing", "analysis"],
      "examples": [
        "Summarize this article in 3 bullet points"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

---

Best Practices

• Be specific — describe exactly what the skill does, not what the agent is
• Use tags — helps systems filter and route to the right agent
• Add examples — shows callers how to phrase requests for this skill
• One skill per capability — split broad agents into distinct skills

---

References

• Agent Definition — Full agent format reference
• Managing Agents — Push and manage agents on Distri Cloud