What Are Agent Skills?

An agent skill is a named, reusable unit of what an agent can do — a packaged capability the agent can select and apply, often described so other agents or orchestrators can discover it. Skills are the agent-side counterpart to the capabilities an organisation advertises: a capability is what a service offers, a skill is what an agent brings. Both want to be named as actions and discoverable, so the right one can be matched to a task.

Is

A named, reusable agent capability

Capability

What a service offers

Skill

What an agent brings

Wants to be

Named and discoverable

Named actions, matched to tasks

Skills make an agent’s abilities legible: rather than an opaque blob of behaviour, an agent presents discrete, named skills that can be advertised, discovered and composed. That legibility is what lets an orchestrator or a peer pick the right agent for a task — the same verbs-not-departments principle, applied to what an agent offers rather than what an organisation does.

Related standards

A2A Agent CardMCP

Questions

Is a skill the same as a capability?

They mirror each other: a capability is what a service exposes, a skill is what an agent brings. Both are named actions meant to be discovered and matched.

How are skills discovered?

Through the agent’s card or manifest, which lists its skills so a peer or orchestrator can learn what it can do.