01 skill
Skill
A SKILL.md file with a header and a procedure. It sits in the skills directory, appears in the agent's catalogue and opens when needed.
SKILL.md
Skills
A procedure
written by a human
A skill is neither a prompt nor code. It is an instruction for how a particular piece of work is done, which the agent opens once the work reaches it. The prompt carries the catalogue of names; the bodies are pulled on demand.
The catalogue is small so far, and that is the honest picture: skills are written for real client tasks rather than padded to make a counter on a landing page look better.
How it works
Three levels
02 plugin
Plugin
A directory with a manifest, its own connectors and its own skills. Installed by command, it cannot silently replace a built-in connector.
interclaw.plugin.json
03 extension
Browser extension
A panel beside the page. It requests permissions through a manifest and receives the intersection of what it asked for and what was granted, not everything it asked for.
manifest.json
Rules
What was made deliberate here
- Catalogue first, bodies on demand. Twenty full skills in the prompt eat the model window before the work even starts.
- Data directories come before the home folder. The service runs under a dedicated user and the unit closes off the home folder with
ProtectHome=true. While plugins were searched for only in the home folder, there was physically nowhere to put them on a production machine. - An unreachable directory means «no plugins here», not a refusal to work. The service writes a warning and moves on.
- A broken manifest inside an installed plugin is an error. A human put it there, and ignoring it silently would mean lying that the plugin works.
- A plugin does not grant itself permissions. The manifest asks, a human grants, and the intersection goes into the process.
Format
Plugin manifest, version 1
interclaw.plugin.json
{ "schema_version": 1, "id": "example", "name": "Example Business API", "version": "1.0.0", "connectors": [{ "id": "api", "command": ["python3", "${PLUGIN_DIR}/server.py"], "env": ["EXAMPLE_API_TOKEN"] }], "skills": ["skills"], "permissions": { "network": ["api.example.com"], "secrets": ["EXAMPLE_API_TOKEN"] }}
${PLUGIN_DIR} is expanded only after the manifest passes validation. At runtime the connector is named example.api, and it cannot be used to shadow a built-in one.
Catalogue
What exists today
Two finished entries and one format. Everything else is written for the task at hand: half a page of skill usually closes work that previously needed its own script.
01 skill
Equipment price research
Builds an evidence table of offers: source, date checked, price, VAT, availability, delivery, confidence. A search snippet is never treated as a price; the page is always opened.
skills/поиск-цен
02 plugin
Calltouch
Calls, requests and sources as a separate plugin with its own manifest and permissions. The first plugin verified live on install and removal.
plugins/calltouch
03 template
Your own skill in half an hour
A header with a name and a description, then a numbered procedure in plain words. No code, no build step.
How to write oneExample
What a good skill looks like
Taken from the price research skill that is already in use. Notice that every step closes a specific way of producing a beautiful and wrong answer.
- Clarify what we are looking for. Category, specs, region, acceptable alternatives. A vague answer is worse than no answer: it looks like work.
- Search with several phrasings. A snippet is a hint about where to go, not a source of price.
- Open the page. The cheap way first; if an empty shell comes back, use the browser. The price is taken only from a page we opened.
- Merge duplicates. One supplier on their own site and on a marketplace is one offer. Three links to the same shop do not widen the sample.
- Assemble a table with the date checked and a confidence level on every row.
A skill like this is portable: it works in CapyAgent, and its text reads to a human as an ordinary instruction. That is the point of the format.
Need a skill for your own work?
Describe the procedure in words and we will turn it into something the agent performs every day.