Step 3 of 4
Skills That Work Across Tools
Structure a skill so it is portable, not tied to one setup.
The SKILL.md format is deliberately simple (frontmatter plus Markdown), which makes skills portable across the tools that understand them. Portability is something you design for, not something you get for free.
- Avoid hard-coding machine-specific paths in the body; reference files relatively.
- State prerequisites explicitly so a new environment can meet them.
- Do not assume a credential or service is present; say what the skill needs.
A skill that names its assumptions travels well. One that hides them works only on the machine it was born on.