Agent Skills

Agent Skills are reusable packages that teach Amara how to perform a repeatable procedure. Instead of pasting the same lengthy instructions into every prompt, you capture them once as a skill and let Syntic Code load them on demand. A skill can be as small as a single set of guidelines or as rich as a folder of scripts, templates, and reference material that the agent draws on while it works.

What a skill contains

A skill lives in a folder under .syntic/skills/ in your project, or under your home directory for skills you want everywhere. Each skill is a directory named after the skill, containing a SKILL.md file. That file starts with frontmatter declaring the skill’s name and a short description that tells Amara when the skill applies. The body of SKILL.md holds the actual instructions.

.syntic/skills/
  release-notes/
    SKILL.md
    template.md
    scripts/collect-commits.sh

Alongside SKILL.md you can ship any supporting files the procedure needs. Amara reads them only when it decides the skill is relevant, so even large bundles stay out of the way until they matter.

How skills are discovered and used

When you start a session, Syntic Code scans the skill directories and reads only the frontmatter of each SKILL.md. The description acts as a trigger: when your request matches what the skill is for, Amara loads the full instructions and any referenced files. This progressive disclosure keeps the context window lean while giving the agent deep expertise the moment it is needed.

---
name: release-notes
description: Draft release notes from merged commits since the last tag.
---
 
# Release notes
 
1. Run `scripts/collect-commits.sh` to gather merged commits.
2. Group changes into Features, Fixes, and Chores.
3. Fill in `template.md` and open a draft PR.

Authoring good skills

Write descriptions that clearly state the situation the skill handles, since that text is all the agent sees before choosing to invoke it. Keep the instructions imperative and concrete, and prefer linking to a helper script over describing a long manual process. Because skills are just files, you can version them in your repository, review changes in pull requests, and bundle them into a plugin to share with your whole team.