Skills

Skills are markdown-based instruction files that teach the agent specific tools, APIs, workflows, or domain knowledge. They are loaded on demand when a task matches a skill's description.

How Skills Work

When you ask the agent to perform a task, it checks available skills for relevance. If a match is found, the skill's content is injected into the agent's context, giving it detailed instructions for the task.

Skills differ from memory:

• Memory = facts the agent has learned (declarative knowledge)
• Skills = instructions for how to do things (procedural knowledge)

Skill Structure

A skill is a markdown file with a specific structure:

# Skill Name

## Description
When this skill applies — used for matching against user requests.

## Instructions
Detailed steps, commands, code examples, and best practices.

## References
Links to documentation, API references, etc.

The Description section is critical — the agent uses it to determine when to load the skill.

Managing Skills

Skills are managed through the platform at three scopes:

Scope	Managed By	Available To
Platform	Platform admin	All users
Org	Org admin	All org members
Team	Team admin	Team members

In Studio

Studio provides the primary interface for skill management:

• Browse available skills
• Create and edit skills
• Install skills from ClawHub (community repository)
• Configure skill scoping (team/org)

CLI

The CLI provides read access to skills (requires platform connection):

astonish skills list              # List available skills
astonish skills show <name>       # Show skill content
astonish skills install <source>  # Install from ClawHub
astonish skills create <name>     # Create a new skill template

Plural Command

The CLI command is astonish skills (plural), not astonish skill.

ClawHub Community Skills

The ClawHub organization hosts community-contributed skills covering common tools and workflows. Install them via Studio or CLI.

Agent Tool: skill_lookup

During chat, the agent can search for relevant skills using the skill_lookup tool:

skill_lookup:
  name: "docker"

This loads the full skill instructions into the agent's context for the current task.

Cascading Access

Skills cascade through the platform hierarchy (see Cascading Defaults):

• Platform skills are available to everyone
• Org skills are available to all org members
• Team skills are available to team members
• Skills from higher scopes cannot be removed at lower scopes, only supplemented

See Sub-agents for how delegated tasks inherit skill access, and Configuration for MCP servers (another way to extend agent capabilities).