Skills¶

A skill is a reusable pack of instructions the agent loads only when it’s needed — a release checklist, a project convention, a multi-step procedure. Keeping the full text out of context until it’s used means you can have many skills without bloating every request.

Creating and installing skills¶

What a skill looks like¶

A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with name and description frontmatter:

~/.nanocode/skills/
  release-notes/
    SKILL.md
    generate.py        # optional bundled script

---
name: release-notes
description: Draft release notes from the git log since the last tag.
---

1. Run `git log $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)..HEAD --oneline`.
2. Group the commits by type and summarize each group.
3. If a bundled script is needed, run it with Bash — see paths below.

nanocode only sees the name and description until the skill is used — the full body loads on demand.

Where skills come from¶

nanocode discovers skills from two places:

.nanocode/skills/ — project-local, checked in with the repo
~/.nanocode/skills/ — your personal skills, available everywhere (under <data_dir>/skills/ when paths.data_dir is customized)

If both define the same name, the project skill wins. List what’s installed with /skills.

Using skills¶

On demand — nanocode loads a skill itself when it’s relevant to your request.
Inline — type $name in a message (Tab-completes) to load a skill yourself for that turn.

Using $skill mention to load a skill's instructions inline — Loading a skill with $name inline.¶

Bundled scripts¶

A skill can ship helper scripts alongside SKILL.md. Inside the body, {skill_dir} (or ${SKILL_DIR}) expands to the skill’s absolute path, so instructions can point the agent at a script to run through Bash:

Run the generator: `python {skill_dir}/generate.py`