Guides

What is an AI skill (and a SKILL.md), for non-coders

A skill is a short document of instructions that an AI tool reads before doing a task for you, so it does the task your way instead of a generic way. SKILL.md is the standard file name and format those instructions are stored in.

What a skill contains

A skill has three parts: a name (like refund-requests), a one-line description of when to use it (which is how the AI decides a skill is relevant), and the instructions themselves, written in ordinary language. A skill can also carry supporting files, like a report template. Nothing about a skill is code. If you can write "here's how we handle refunds: check the order date; under 60 days, approve; over, escalate to a manager," you can write a skill.

Why the format matters

SKILL.md is an open format (agentskills.io) adopted across vendors: Claude and Claude Code (docs), ChatGPT and Codex (docs), and Cursor (docs) all read the same file layout. A skill written once is portable across all of them, which is what makes a shared cross-tool library possible.

What skills are good for

Anything a teammate would otherwise re-explain: how the team writes proposals, answers refund requests, runs kickoff calls, formats interview feedback, or names things. The test for whether something should be a skill: if a new hire would ask "how do we do X here?", X is a skill.

Where SkillRelay fits

SkillRelay is a hosted library of skills for a team. You never edit SKILL.md files directly: you tell your AI assistant what is wrong ("the refunds skill still says 30 days; it's 60 now") and SkillRelay writes the file, versions it, and delivers it to every tool the team uses.

SkillRelay is a hosted skill library that syncs across the AI tools a team uses. Overview · Product reference · How it works