When to use remote skills

Remote Skills is useful when the skill publisher and the application need different release cycles. For example, a team can update shared writing guidance once and make it available to several agents without redeploying each application.

Use remote skills when

• Several applications share the same skill collection.
• A publisher owns and updates skills independently of your agent.
• Agents select a few skills from a larger catalog.
• Future sessions should receive updates while existing tasks stay consistent.

Use skills from the local filesystem when

A small, fixed set belongs to one application and should update or roll back with it. Those skills can travel with the application's files or container image. Your existing build then controls both the application and its skills, without a separate publishing step.

Account for local storage

Remote Skills uses a bounded disk cache by default. In containers, a persistent cache volume can reuse verified files across restarts. The cache is disposable and can be rebuilt from the origin.

An ephemeral cache repeats network, hashing, extraction, and storage work after restart. Activation downloads the whole selected skill even if your agent reads only one reference. If independent updates offer little benefit and persistent storage is awkward, image-local skills may be simpler.

See Caching and updates for the cache lifecycle and offline options.