Skills are reusable content packages that teach agents how to perform specific tasks. Each skill contains markdown instructions that get injected into an agent’s context at runtime, giving it domain-specific knowledge — like a tone guide, a compliance checklist, or a debugging runbook. The agent only sees the title and description, allowing for it to understand when to inject the body content into its context.
Skills are owner-scoped (owned by a user or organization), versioned with semantic versioning, and private by default.
Create a skill
guild skill create <name>
guild skill create tone-guide --overview "Brand voice and messaging guidelines"
| Flag | Description |
|---|
--owner <account> | Owner account name or ID. Defaults to your account. |
--overview <text> | Short description for display and search. Required in non-interactive mode. |
--public | Make the skill visible to all users. Requires admin privileges. |
owner~skill-name (e.g. myorg~tone-guide). Use this name to reference the skill in other commands.
Add a version
Skills use semantic versioning. Each version contains the markdown body — the actual instructions an agent receives at runtime.
guild skill version create myorg~tone-guide \
--version-number 1.0.0 \
--description "Guides the agent to use brand-appropriate tone and messaging" \
--body-file tone-guide.md
| Flag | Description |
|---|
--version-number <semver> | Semantic version (e.g. 1.0.0). Must be greater than the latest existing version. |
--description <text> | Tells the runtime when to activate this skill. This is what the LLM sees to decide if the skill is relevant. |
--body <text> | Inline markdown content. |
--body-file <path> | Read the markdown content from a file. |
The description is runtime-facing — it tells the agent when to use the
skill. The skill’s overview is human-facing — it appears in search results
and listings. Keep them distinct.
List versions
guild skill version list myorg~tone-guide
--limit and --offset for pagination.
Get version details
guild skill version get <version-id>
Manage skills
Get skill details
guild skill get myorg~tone-guide
List skills
guild skill list
guild skill list --search "tone"
guild skill list --sort updated
guild skill list --owner myorg
| Flag | Description |
|---|
--search <query> | Search by name, overview, or owner. |
--sort <field> | Sort by name (default), updated, or newest. |
--owner <id> | Filter by owner account. |
--limit <number> | Results per page (default 20). |
--offset <number> | Pagination offset. |
Update a skill
guild skill update myorg~tone-guide --overview "Updated brand voice guidelines"
guild skill update myorg~tone-guide --public
guild skill update myorg~tone-guide --no-public
| Flag | Description |
|---|
--overview <text> | Update the description. |
--public | Make the skill public (requires admin). |
--no-public | Make the skill private. |
Visibility and permissions
Skills are private by default. Only the owner and their organization members can view and use them.
Making a skill public requires account admin privileges. Public skills are visible to all Guild users.
| Action | Who can do it |
|---|
| Create | Owner or account admin |
| View | Owner, organization members, or everyone (if public) |
| Update | Owner or account admin |
| Create version | Owner or account admin |
Typical workflow
# 1. Create the skill
guild skill create compliance-checklist \
--overview "SOC 2 compliance checks for code review"
# 2. Write your skill content
# (create a markdown file with the instructions)
# 3. Publish the first version
guild skill version create myorg~compliance-checklist \
--version-number 1.0.0 \
--description "Use when reviewing code for SOC 2 compliance violations" \
--body-file compliance-checklist.md
# 4. Iterate — update content and bump the version
guild skill version create myorg~compliance-checklist \
--version-number 1.1.0 \
--description "Use when reviewing code for SOC 2 compliance violations" \
--body-file compliance-checklist-v2.md
JSON output
All skill commands support --json for machine-readable output:
guild skill list --json
guild skill get myorg~tone-guide --json
guild skill version list myorg~tone-guide --json
