Agent Skills

Agent Skills package instructions, scripts and reference files that an agent loads only when it needs them. A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md at its root. HasMCP lets you author skills on a provider, pick which ones each MCP server offers, and serve them to agents over MCP with the skills extension, next to the server’s tools, resources and prompts. Skills pair well with tools. A tool gives the agent an action, such as createInvoice. A skill teaches the agent when and how to use it: your billing rules, the order of calls, edge cases, and templates.

How It Works

Skills live on providers. Each provider has a Skills tab. A skill is either written in HasMCP (local) or synced from a remote MCP server (remote).
Servers pick skills. On an MCP server’s Skills tab, you choose which of its providers’ skills the server offers.
Agents discover and load them over MCP. When a server has at least one skill, it advertises the skills extension during initialize. Agents list the skills and read only the files they need.

Writing a Skill

Open the provider's Skills tab

Go to Providers, open a provider and select the Skills tab. Click Add Skill. The editor opens with a template SKILL.md.

Write SKILL.md

SKILL.md must start with YAML frontmatter that has a name and a description:

---
name: refund-policy
description: How to decide on and issue Stripe refunds. Use when a customer asks for a refund or disputes a charge.
---

# Refund policy

1. Look up the charge with `getCharge` first.
2. Refunds over $500 need a human's approval...

HasMCP reads the name and description from the frontmatter. You don’t enter them separately.

Add more files (optional)

Use Add file, Upload files or Upload folder to add reference documents, templates or scripts. Uploading a folder keeps its paths. Select a file to edit its path and content.

Save

Click Create Skill. The skill is served to agents as skill://<name>/….

Rules

	Limit
Name	Lowercase letters, digits and single hyphens (`^[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*$`), at most 64 characters, unique per provider
Description	Required, at most 1024 characters
Files	At most 512 per skill, including `SKILL.md`, and 16 MiB in total. Text files only.
Paths	Relative, `/`-separated, up to 512 characters. No `.` or `..` segments, and no `\`, `?` or `#`.

Remote Skills

When a remote MCP provider offers skills through the skills extension, Sync pulls them into the provider’s Skills tab. These skills are marked Remote and can’t be edited in HasMCP; their files are fetched from the remote server, with the user’s credentials, when an agent reads them. If you write a local skill with the same name, it replaces the remote one.

Enabling Skills on a Server

Open the MCP server and select the Skills tab.
Click Edit Skills.
Expand a provider to see its Available Skills, and tick the ones to offer. Use Select All / Deselect All for bulk changes.
Click Save Changes.

Connected clients are notified right away with notifications/resources/list_changed.

Served Over MCP

When a server has at least one skill, its initialize result declares the extension:

{
  "capabilities": {
    "extensions": {
      "io.modelcontextprotocol/skills": { "directoryRead": true }
    }
  }
}

Agents that support the extension use these methods:

Method	Purpose
`skills/list`	Lists the server’s skills (`uri`, `frontmatter`, and a manifest of files with their `sha256` digests and sizes), 50 per page
`skills/get`	Returns one skill by the URI of its `SKILL.md`
`resources/directory/read`	Lists the files and folders directly inside a skill folder
`resources/read`	Reads a file of a skill

Skill URIs look like skill://refund-policy/SKILL.md and skill://refund-policy/templates/email.md. Each skill’s SKILL.md is also listed in resources/list, so clients without the skills extension can still find and read it.

API

Skills are managed per provider:

Method	Path	Description
`GET`	`/providers/{id}/skills`	List the provider’s skills
`POST`	`/providers/{id}/skills`	Create a skill
`GET`	`/providers/{id}/skills/{skillID}`	Get a skill with its files
`PUT`	`/providers/{id}/skills/{skillID}`	Replace a skill’s files
`DELETE`	`/providers/{id}/skills/{skillID}`	Delete a skill

Create and update take the files only. The name and description come from SKILL.md:

curl -X POST https://app.hasmcp.com/api/v1/providers/{providerID}/skills \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HASMCP_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "skill": {
      "files": [
        { "path": "SKILL.md", "content": "---\nname: refund-policy\ndescription: How to issue refunds.\n---\n\n# Refund policy\n..." }
      ]
    }
  }'

Creating, updating and deleting skills needs permission to update the provider. Listing and reading them needs permission to read it. To choose a server’s skills, send providers[].skills[].id with Update MCP Server.

Features

Agent Skills | HasMCP Features

Agent Skills

How It Works

Writing a Skill

Rules

Remote Skills

Enabling Skills on a Server

Served Over MCP

API

​Agent Skills

​How It Works

​Writing a Skill

​Rules

​Remote Skills

​Enabling Skills on a Server

​Served Over MCP

​API

​Related Reading

Agent Skills

How It Works

Writing a Skill

Rules

Remote Skills

Enabling Skills on a Server

Served Over MCP

API

Related Reading