nanoSkills

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“Progressive disclosure: show only what’s needed, when it’s needed.”

The simplest way to add specialized skills to your AI agent.

A minimal implementation of the Agent Skills standard. ~170 lines of code.

install

pip install -r requirements.txt

Set environment variables:

export OPENAI_API_KEY='your-key-here'
export OPENAI_BASE_URL='https://api.openai.com/v1'  # optional
export OPENAI_MODEL='gpt-4o-mini'  # optional

quick start

With real skills:

python agent.py "review my code for best practices"
python agent.py "help me design a REST API"

With fake travel agent (API simulation):

python agent.py --skills-dir skills-fake "book a flight from SFO to NYC"

how it works

Progressive disclosure in 3 levels:

Level 1: Discovery - Scan for SKILL.md files Level 2: List - Show name + description (~50 tokens/skill) Level 3: Activate - Load full instructions (~500-2000 tokens)

skills = discover_skills("./skills-real")
tools.append(build_activate_tool(skills))
# Agent decides when to activate based on task

Why not MCP? Skills use progressive disclosure to avoid MCP’s upfront schema bloat (10k-25k tokens). See MCP_VS_SKILLS.md for detailed comparison.

skill libraries

skills-real/ - Real-world skills

• git-expert - Git workflow and conventional commits
• code-reviewer - Code quality and best practices
• api-designer - REST API design patterns

skills-fake/ - Simulated API scenarios

• travel-agent - Flight/hotel booking simulation

examples

# Code review
python agent.py "review this Python function for improvements"

# Git help
python agent.py "write a commit message for adding user auth"

# API design
python agent.py "design a REST API for a blog system"

# Travel booking (fake APIs)
python agent.py --skills-dir skills-fake "plan a trip to Paris"

creating skills

mkdir -p skills-real/my-skill
cat > skills-real/my-skill/SKILL.md << 'EOF'
---
name: my-skill
description: Brief description for AI
---
Full instructions here.
EOF

license

MIT

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⏺ One skill at a time, infinite expertise.