Skills

Skills are structured Markdown documents that provide domain knowledge and behavioral guidance to the agent. Each skill covers a specific workflow concern across all workflow phases.

Skill anatomy

Each skill lives in skills/<name>/ with two components:

skills/
  brainstorming/
    SKILL.md          # Main skill document with frontmatter
    references/       # Supporting documents, templates, checklists
      approach-template.md
      constraints.md

Frontmatter

SKILL.md uses YAML frontmatter with these fields:

---
name: brainstorming                    # kebab-case identifier
description: "Collaborative design..." # <= 1,024 characters
metadata:
  author: exarchos
  version: 1.0.0
  mcp-server: exarchos                 # Required if skill uses Exarchos MCP tools
  category: workflow                   # workflow | utility
  phase-affinity: ideate               # Phase(s) where this skill activates
---

Skills that invoke Exarchos MCP tools must include metadata.mcp-server: exarchos in their frontmatter. Utility or standards skills without MCP dependency are exempt.

Production skills

Skill	Description	Phase Affinity
brainstorming	Design exploration, approach selection	ideate
cleanup	Post-merge workflow resolution	completed
debug	Bug investigation and fix (hotfix/thorough tracks)	triage, debug-review
delegation	Task dispatch to agent teammates in worktrees	delegate
git-worktrees	Worktree management for parallel work	delegate
implementation-planning	TDD-based task planning from design docs	plan
oneshot-workflow	Lightweight in-session workflow for trivial changes with opt-in PR path (v2.6.0)	plan, implementing
prune-workflows	Bulk-cancel stale non-terminal workflows from the pipeline view (v2.6.0)	maintenance
quality-review	Stage 2 code quality review (+ axiom/impeccable if installed)	review
refactor	Code improvement (polish/overhaul tracks)	explore, synthesize
shepherd	PR shepherding through CI and reviews	synthesize
spec-review	Stage 1 spec compliance review	review
synthesis	PR creation from feature branch	synthesize
workflow-state	Checkpoint and resume workflow state	any phase

The quality-review skill integrates with companion plugins when available. If axiom (axiom:audit) or impeccable (impeccable:critique) are installed, their quality dimensions are invoked during Stage 2 review and findings merge with native results. These are informational and do not add blocking gates. See Companion Plugins for details.

Skill resolution

Commands reference skills via skills/<name>/SKILL.md. The agent loads the skill document and its references to get process details, templates, and checklists for the current workflow phase.

Skills invoke orchestrate actions through the MCP server as native TypeScript handlers:

exarchos_orchestrate({ action: "check_tdd_compliance" })