Remote Skills
Compatibility
Supported skill formats, discovery protocols, and optional extensions.
Remote Skills uses the existing Agent Skills format and an open HTTP discovery protocol. Publishing changes how a skill is delivered, not the format of its instructions and resources.
Supported standards
| Standard | Remote Skills support |
|---|---|
| Agent Skills | SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter and Markdown instructions, plus optional references, scripts, and assets. |
| Agent Skills Discovery | The v0.2.0 draft: a well-known catalog, artifact URLs, and SHA-256 digests. |
| HTTP caching | Catalog caching and revalidation using Cache-Control, ETag, and Last-Modified. |
| Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 | Optional skill release versions. Version ranges and release history are Remote Skills features, not requirements of Agent Skills. |
Standard skill fields such as name, description, license, compatibility, metadata, and allowed-tools remain part of the skill. Remote Skills does not execute scripts or interpret allowed-tools as permission to run them; the agent application controls execution.
Discovery schema
| Property | Supported value |
|---|---|
| Catalog location | /.well-known/agent-skills/index.json at the host root. |
Catalog $schema | https://schemas.agentskills.io/discovery/0.2.0/schema.json |
| Artifact digest | SHA-256 of the exact downloaded file, written as sha256:<64 lowercase hex characters>. |
| Additional fields | Unrecognized, non-conflicting fields are ignored. |
Clients accept the schema above. Older catalogs and missing or unknown schema identifiers return unsupported_schema; they are not silently converted to the supported format.
Artifact formats
Catalog type | File format | Contents |
|---|---|---|
skill-md | Markdown | One SKILL.md file, without bundled resources. |
archive | .tar.gz or .zip | SKILL.md at the archive root, alongside resources. |
Both SDKs accept these formats, subject to the same file safety and size checks. Build and host lists their HTTP content types.
Optional Remote Skills extensions
| Extension | Purpose | Interoperability |
|---|---|---|
| Versions and history | Uses metadata.version and the catalog's x-remote-skills release history for version selection. | Discovery clients that ignore the extension can still load the current release. |
| Scoped catalogs | Uses Remote-Skills-Scope to request and confirm a host-defined catalog view. | Requires support in both the client and the host; ordinary HTTP authentication remains separate. |
These extensions do not introduce a different skill format. An agent still needs an integration that can discover and load remote skills; format compatibility does not automatically add remote loading to an agent that only reads local folders. The Consume guide documents that SDK interface.