Agent Skills: Teaching Your AI New Capabilities

What are agent skills?

An AI agent is only as useful as the context and instructions it has access to. A base agent with a general system prompt can handle broad tasks — drafting emails, summarizing text, answering questions — but it lacks the specialized knowledge needed for domain-specific work like running an SEO audit, generating a properly formatted invoice, or performing a structured code review.

Skills are installable capability packs that give your agents domain expertise. Each skill adds files to your agent's context — templates, checklists, reference data, structured prompts — that transform a generalist into a specialist. Think of skills as job training: your agent already knows how to think and communicate; the skill teaches it how to apply those abilities to a specific type of work.

How skills work technically

When you install a skill on an agent through the k-claw dashboard, the platform sends the skill's files to your server via the connector daemon. These files are placed in the agent's working directory where they become part of the agent's context. The process is straightforward:

• You select an agent and browse available skills in the dashboard
• Click install — k-claw sends the skill files to your server via write_file commands
• The agent's context automatically includes the new files
• The skill is tracked in the agentSkills table with status and installation timestamp
• To remove a skill, click uninstall — k-claw sends delete_file commands to clean up

No agent restart is required. The new files are available in the agent's next conversation. Installation typically takes a few seconds.

Built-in skill packs

k-claw ships with five built-in skill packs that cover the most common specialized tasks businesses need. Each is production-ready and can be installed on any agent.

SEO Audit

The SEO audit skill gives your agent a comprehensive checklist and methodology for analyzing websites. It includes:

• A structured audit template covering technical SEO, on-page optimization, content quality, and backlink analysis
• Scoring rubrics for each category so the agent can rate a site objectively
• Common issue patterns with specific recommendations (missing meta descriptions, slow page load, broken internal links)
• Competitor comparison frameworks

When you ask your agent to "audit example.com", it follows the structured methodology rather than giving a vague overview. The output is a professional audit report you can share with clients or use internally.

Best installed on: CMO agent, or a dedicated SEO specialist agent.

Invoice Generation

The invoice generation skill provides templates and formatting instructions for creating professional invoices. It includes:

• Invoice templates in multiple formats (detailed line items, time-based billing, milestone billing)
• Tax calculation guidelines for common jurisdictions
• Payment terms language templates
• Follow-up email templates for overdue invoices

You provide the billing details — client name, services, amounts, dates — and the agent produces a complete, properly formatted invoice ready for PDF conversion. For recurring clients, the agent remembers their billing preferences from uploaded context files.

Best installed on: CFO agent, or an Account Manager agent in the Agency template.

Code Review

The code review skill equips your agent with structured analysis frameworks for evaluating code quality. It includes:

• Review checklists by language and framework (JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, React, Node.js)
• Security vulnerability patterns to check for (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, insecure dependencies)
• Performance analysis templates (N+1 queries, unnecessary re-renders, memory leaks)
• Best practice references for common patterns (error handling, input validation, testing coverage)

When you paste code or reference files, the agent applies the structured review rather than giving surface-level feedback. It identifies specific issues with line references, explains why each issue matters, and suggests concrete fixes.

Best installed on: CTO agent.

Social Media

The social media skill provides content creation frameworks and platform-specific guidelines. It includes:

• Post templates for each major platform (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook) with character limits and formatting best practices
• Content calendar planning frameworks
• Hashtag strategy guidelines by industry
• Engagement response templates for comments and messages
• Analytics interpretation guides for understanding platform metrics

Give the agent a topic or announcement and it produces platform-optimized posts for each channel, maintaining your brand voice while adapting format and tone for each platform's audience.

Best installed on: CMO agent.

Email Drafting

The email drafting skill provides templates and frameworks for professional email communication across business scenarios. It includes:

• Templates by category: cold outreach, follow-ups, proposals, status updates, apologies, negotiations
• Tone calibration guides (formal, professional-friendly, casual)
• Subject line optimization frameworks
• Multi-email sequence templates for sales and onboarding flows
• Cultural communication notes for international correspondence

Instead of asking the agent to "write an email", you can say "draft a follow-up email for a lead who attended our demo last week but hasn't responded" and get a properly structured, contextually appropriate response.

Best installed on: Sales agent, Account Manager agent, or any agent that handles external communication.

Installing multiple skills on one agent

Skills are composable. You can install multiple skills on a single agent to create a multi-skilled specialist. For example, installing both the SEO Audit and Social Media skills on your CMO agent gives it the ability to perform website audits and create platform-optimized content within the same conversation.

There is no technical limit to the number of skills per agent, but keep in mind that more context files means more information for the agent to process. For best results, install skills that are relevant to the agent's primary role and remove skills that are no longer needed.

Creating custom skills

The built-in skills cover common use cases, but every business has unique processes that deserve their own skill packs. Custom skills follow the same structure — a collection of files that add domain knowledge to your agent.

To create a custom skill, you prepare the files that your agent needs for a specific task category:

• Templates — Document templates, report formats, email structures that your business uses regularly
• Checklists — Step-by-step procedures for common workflows (client onboarding, project kickoff, quarterly review)
• Reference data — Pricing tables, product specifications, competitor analysis, industry benchmarks
• Prompt instructions — Detailed instructions for how the agent should approach specific types of work

For example, a real estate agency might create a "Property Listing" skill with description templates, photography checklists, pricing comparison frameworks, and market analysis instructions. A law firm might create a "Contract Review" skill with clause checklists, risk assessment templates, and jurisdiction-specific compliance notes.

Upload these files to your agent through the k-claw dashboard's file upload feature. Once tested and refined, you can package them as a reusable skill.

Community sharing

Skills that solve common problems are worth sharing. The k-claw community provides a space for users to share their custom skill packs and benefit from what others have built. The community channels in the platform let you showcase your skills, get feedback, and discover what other users have created for their industries.

Popular community-created skills tend to emerge around specific industries (e-commerce product descriptions, real estate listings, healthcare compliance) and specific workflows (client onboarding, project post-mortems, competitive analysis). By sharing your specialized knowledge as a skill pack, you contribute to a growing library that makes everyone's agents more capable.

Skills and team workflows

Skills become even more powerful in a team context. When different agents have different skills, inter-agent delegation becomes natural and efficient:

• Your COO delegates an SEO audit to the CMO (who has the SEO Audit skill installed)
• The CMO completes the audit and sends the results to the COO
• The COO asks the CTO (with Code Review skill) to address the technical SEO issues identified
• The CTO sends implementation recommendations back to the COO

Each agent contributes its specialized skill to a larger workflow, coordinated by the COO. The skills system ensures that each agent has the right tools for its specific contribution, while inter-agent communication ensures the pieces come together into a coherent result.

Getting started with skills

If you already have agents deployed, adding skills is a one-click operation from the k-claw dashboard. Navigate to your agent, open the skills tab, and browse the available packs. Start with the skill most relevant to your agent's primary role — SEO Audit for your CMO, Code Review for your CTO, Invoice Generation for your CFO — and test it with a real task. The improvement in output quality and consistency is immediate.

The k-claw courses include detailed walkthroughs for each built-in skill, plus a guide for creating and packaging your own custom skills. Whether you use the built-in packs or build your own, skills are the mechanism that transforms a general-purpose AI agent into a specialized team member.