Open Skill Standard

Open standard · agent-agnostic · MIT

One router,
one skill graph,
28 IT roles

Pick the right Agent Skills for each task, in the right order, with the reason for every step. A reference implementation ties together superpowers, BMad Method, spec-kit, codegraph, Anthropic's skills and more, without copying any of them.

Get started Explore the skill graph View on GitHub
Terminal: open-skill route --explain for a data engineer adding a warehouse pipeline returns an ordered, explained chain: writing-plans, subagent-driven-development, explore-data, code-review, with scores, runner-ups and the install command for each missing skill
28role packs
196skills and tools described
18upstream sources
10lifecycle phases
10coding agents

01 · why

A typical setup has 100+ overlapping skills. Open Skill Standard adds the missing layer: which role a skill serves, which phase it acts in, and which artifacts it consumes and produces. From that, a router builds a short, ordered, explained chain.

  1. Descriptions overlap

    Agents pick skills by matching descriptions. Three build workflows and several reviewers that sound alike make them load the wrong one or miss the right one.

  2. The listing gets cut

    Claude Code budgets the skill listing at about 1% of the context window and drops the least-used descriptions first, so matching gets worse exactly when you install more.

02 · what you get

Four core skills, a CLI and a registry that never copies upstream content

Upstream skills are described as metadata and installed with their official commands. The router reads that metadata; your agent runs the chain.

open-skill-router

A chain, not a guess

Routes the task, announces the chain in one line, runs step 1 and records what ran.

  1. plansuperpowers:writing-plans2.0
  2. buildsuperpowers:subagent-driven-development2.5
  3. verifydata:explore-data2.0
  4. reviewcode-review2.0
open-skill-standards

Definition of done

Checklists, general and for each of the 28 roles.

open-skill-intel

The right source first

codegraph, Context7, schemas, the web or your notes, before guessing.

open-skill-learn

Learns you, locally

Lessons and preferences live in ~/.open-skill/ and shape future routes. Nothing leaves your machine.

open-skill CLI

Every decision on the command line

route --explain--why-notsearchdoctorsessionlintauditlearn

03 · how it works

From registry to an explained chain

  1. Describe and indexThe registry and the skills installed on your machine feed a local SQLite FTS5 index.
  2. Route by phase and rolePhase, size and window first, then scoring and selection per phase, then an ordered chain.
  3. Ask whyroute --explain and route --why-not <skill> show every decision.
Architecture: the public registry and organization overlays feed scan and a SQLite FTS5 index; the router combines them with your project and your local ~/.open-skill layer, and the coding agent runs the chain
Routing pipeline: request, phase and size, phase window, then for each phase candidate filters, scoring and selection, then trimming and the ordered steps

Both diagrams are generated from the code and the registry on every change, so they cannot drift.

04 · roles

28 role packs, each with its own risks and skills

A role pack states the role's characteristic risk, its principles, the project files that suggest it, and its primary and alternative skills per phase.

engfrontend-developerengbackend-developerengfullstack-developerengmobile-developerengembedded-engineerenggame-developeropsqa-engineeropsdevops-engineeropssite-reliability-engineeropscloud-engineeropssecurity-engineeropsdatabase-administratoropssystem-administratorleadsoftware-architect
datadata-engineerdataanalytics-engineerdatadata-analystdatadata-scientistaiml-engineeraiai-engineeraidata-ai-platform-engineerleadtech-leadleadengineering-managerprodproduct-managerprodbusiness-analystprodux-designerprodtechnical-writerprodscrum-master

Same kind of request, different role, different chain

A site reliability engineer who reports that checkout requests time out starts with debugging, not with a plan. The data engineer in the terminal above starts with a plan.

Terminal: open-skill route --explain for a site reliability engineer whose checkout requests time out, starting with debugging

05 · parallel sessions

Several agents, one project, one shared graph

Each session declares the paths it works on. After an edit, open-skill session update refreshes one shared Graphify graph and warns, never blocks, when the change reaches another session's scope.

Parallel sessions: sessions declare scopes and share one working tree and one Graphify graph; session update refreshes the graph, takes the files changed since the session started, sets aside other sessions' own edits, walks two hops back over calls, references and imports, and reports conflicts, others and affected files

06 · measured

Scored on requests it was never tuned on

The router is compared with baselines and ablations using the checks CI runs. Every number is reproducible with python -m open_skill.benchmark.

Routing benchmark on held-out requests: the Open Skill router against description match only, a random skill in the router's phases, and the router without phase detection or role priors, with 95% Wilson intervals

07 · the skill graph

Every skill, by phase, in one page

Artifacts, requirements, conflicts and recommending roles for each of the 196 skills. Filter by role, phase and source; it works offline and with the keyboard.

The skill graph page: skills grouped by phase, with filters by role, phase, source and installed state
Open the live skill graph →

08 · get started

Three steps in Claude Code

Or in any of the 10 agents that load Agent Skills (see the list). Upstream frameworks are described, then installed with their own commands:

superpowers BMad Method spec-kit codegraph Graphify Anthropic skills Knowledge-work plugins Context7 ponytail taste-skill addyosmani/agent-skills vercel-labs/agent-skills 
# 1. Install the skills (Claude Code); or: npx skills add VoKhoiNhon/open-skill-standard -g
/plugin marketplace add VoKhoiNhon/open-skill-standard
/plugin install open-skill@open-skill-standard

# 2. Tell it your role(s); this also seeds starter knowledge for them
uvx --from git+https://github.com/VoKhoiNhon/open-skill-standard@v0.7.2 open-skill init --role data-engineer=0.7 --role data-analyst=0.3

# 3. In your agent, inside any project
/open-skill-router add a pipeline that loads orders into the warehouse

Stop guessing which skill to load

Read the specification, write an adapter for your own skills, or add a role pack for your team.

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