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.