Skills

A skill is a reusable workflow with a name, a description, and instructions. Agents select skills by their directory names.

Write a playbook

Create ~/.config/agent-farm/skills/review-change/SKILL.md:

---
name: review-change
description: Review a code change and report actionable findings.
---
 
Read the task and diff. Trace the affected behavior.
Run the relevant checks. Report findings with file references,
expected behavior, and evidence.

Add it to an agent definition:

skills:
  - review-change

Keep supporting material nearby

skills/review-change/
├── SKILL.md
├── references/
│   └── review-rubric.md
└── metadata/
    └── codex.yaml

Use references/ for supporting guidance. Keep executable helpers and assets in suitable directories alongside the skill.

For Codex presentation and invocation policy, metadata/codex.yaml can contain:

interface:
  display_name: Review Change
  short_description: Review code with actionable evidence
  default_prompt: Use $review-change to review this diff.
policy:
  allow_implicit_invocation: true

Native layouts

Agent Farm preserves SKILL.md and supporting files. For Codex it translates metadata/codex.yaml to the native agents/openai.yaml path. Claude’s generated layout uses the skill and its supporting resources.

Keep one metadata filename per skill. Imported skills using the native agents/openai.yaml filename remain supported.

Use skills across repositories

agent-farm set global planner --harness claude
agent-farm status global --harness claude
agent-farm unset global planner --harness claude

set global PROFILE installs that profile’s selected top-level skills into the native user skill directory. To launch its model, instructions, and children together, use agent-farm run PROFILE.

status global shows managed, pre-existing, and changed skills. Unloading removes owned links and preserves source files.

User-level layouts live under ~/.cache/agent-farm/user-skill-layouts/ and link to central sources. Existing file edits remain live. After adding, removing, or renaming files, unload every profile sharing that skill and load them again.

Source: Skill authoring and native output .