Skills

A skill is a reusable procedure written in plain Markdown — a SKILL.md file that says, in steps, how to do a particular thing well. The agent reads it when the task matches and follows it, instead of improvising from scratch each time.

A skill usually has:

• a short description of when to use it (so the agent knows when it applies),
• the steps or rules to follow,
• optionally, example inputs and outputs.

Where they live and how they generalise

In Hermes, skills live in ~/.hermes/skills/. The same idea shows up across agent tools: Claude Code has skills too (invoked as /skill-name), and the Superpowers toolkit you’ll use in Track 2 is a library of them.

Why it matters: skills turn “knowledge in someone’s head” into a file the whole team — and the agent — can reuse. It’s how a good workflow stops being a one-off and becomes repeatable.

Try it: in the Hermes dashboard (localhost:9119), open the Skills screen and read one. Then in Claude Code, type / and see the available skills listed.

Next: Profiles & SOUL.md — how an agent’s identity and config are kept separate and switchable.