Core Concepts

Skills

A skill is a structured set of AI instructions packaged as a folder of Markdown files. Skills are:

• Versioned — tracked with semantic versioning (major.minor.patch)
• Documented — every skill has a human-readable description and usage guide
• Reviewable — community ratings and reviews ensure quality
• Composable — skills can reference other skills or shared resources

SKILL.md

Every skill has a SKILL.md file at its root. This is the entry point for both AI agents and human readers. It contains:

1. Skill metadata (name, version, author, compatibility)
2. System prompt — the core AI instructions
3. Context files — supplementary reference material
4. Usage examples — example inputs and expected outputs

The Marketplace

The marketplace is the public catalog of all published skills. Skills are categorized, searchable, and sortable by popularity, rating, and recency.

Anyone can publish a skill. The AiNouns team reviews submissions for quality and safety before publishing.

Compatibility

Skills are designed to work with any modern large language model. Compatibility is tested against Claude 3.5, GPT-4o, and Gemini 1.5 Pro. Community-reported compatibility with other models is tracked in each skill's metadata.