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Define: Skill #47

Description

@asish-singh

Same shape as #43, raised as an issue per docs/data-schemas.md. The text is PR ready if that is preferred.

Term: Skill (existing Universal entry, definition currently pending, workgroups: [])

Proposed definition

A skill is a packaged, reusable set of instructions and supporting resources that changes how an agent performs a class of task, loaded into the model's context when relevant rather than built into the model or executed as code.

Why this wording

The discriminator is instructs rather than executes, which is the line between a skill and a tool. A tool is invoked and its effect happens outside the model, in an API, a file system, a browser. A skill changes what the model itself does next. If removing it changes what actions are possible, it was a tool. If removing it changes how well or in what style the possible actions are carried out, it was a skill. The schema's content rule asks paired concepts to state their difference explicitly, and Tool is not yet in the taxonomy, so the contrast lives in this sentence rather than in contrastsWith. I have not added Tool as a term, following the precedent in #43 that a definition proposal should not smuggle in new terms.

Proposed scopeNote

The packaging is the point. Instructions pasted into a single prompt are prompting, not a skill. What makes it a skill is that it is named, versioned, and loaded on demand across sessions and agents. Whether skills are curated by humans or generated by agents is orthogonal to the definition.

Proposed field values

term: 'Skill'
category: ''                    // unchanged, still deferred
aliases: []
broaderTerm: null               // unchanged, still deferred
definition: 'A skill is a packaged, reusable set of instructions and supporting resources that changes how an agent performs a class of task, loaded into the model's context when relevant rather than built into the model or executed as code.'
scopeNote: <as above>
relatedTerms: ['Harness']
contrastsWith: []               // Tool is not a taxonomy term yet
workgroups: []                  // unchanged, Universal

relatedTerms points only at terms already in the taxonomy.

Activity

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