Skip to content
agent-skills-toolkit

Frequently asked questions

Explanation: frequently asked questions

Section titled “Explanation: frequently asked questions”

Short, accurate answers to the questions people ask first. For the normative detail behind any answer, see STANDARD.md; for the tier mechanics, see conformance and tiers.

Is this Claude-only?

Section titled “Is this Claude-only?”

No. The toolkit is cross-agent: it targets Claude Code and Codex as first-class, and stays compatible with the broader agentskills.io ecosystem at the Universal (Bronze) tier. You author one canonical library.json, and the native per-agent manifests are generated from it, so the two agents stay in lockstep rather than drifting into a secretly-Claude-only plugin.

Some components are agent-specific by nature, and the Standard says so plainly: subagents, slash commands, output styles, and status lines have a Claude form that Codex either realizes differently or does not have an equivalent for. That is a property of the agents, not a limit of the toolkit. Skills - the portable core - run unchanged on both.

Do I have to run a Node command to grade a plugin?

Section titled “Do I have to run a Node command to grade a plugin?”

No. The everyday path is the askit-evaluate skill (or the /askit-evaluate command): invoke it, or just ask your agent to “grade this plugin against the Standard,” and it reports the tier, the burndown to the next tier, and per-rule remediation.

Under the hood the same checks are also a portable script (node scripts/check.mjs), which is the CI engine. As the README puts it under “why a script, not only a skill”: a model can present the grade, but only a deterministic gate with a real exit code can run in CI and let a plugin prove itself. The skill is the door; the script is the engine, and both run the same checks. You only reach for the script directly when you want grading in CI, a pre-commit hook, or a plain terminal.

What is the difference between a plugin and a skill library?

Section titled “What is the difference between a plugin and a skill library?”

They live on two different axes, and the vocabulary keeps them apart on purpose.

  • A plugin is structure: the unit of release. It packages components, carries the one version, and is the thing you install. A component (a skill, command, subagent, hook, workflow, chain contract, or MCP server) is the unit of reuse that sits inside it.
  • A skill library is quality: the grade a plugin earns by conforming to the Standard (Bronze, Silver, or Gold). It is not a separate artifact you install. An advanced skill library is simply a plugin that has climbed to the high tiers.

The path is loose components into a plugin into a skill library. The same plugin becomes a skill library by earning a grade; nothing new gets created.

Why tiers?

Section titled “Why tiers?”

Tiers turn “best-in-class” from an opinion into a worklist. A bare folder of skills is loose components; the tiers (Bronze, Silver, Gold) are the rungs that make it a coherent, portable, governed plugin, one rung at a time. Each rung certifies a concrete capability:

  • Bronze (Universal) makes a plugin portable - identical files that run on any compliant agent.
  • Silver (Convergent) makes it genuinely cross-agent - the multi-agent machinery emitted in the right format for each agent.
  • Gold (Advanced) makes it self-proving - hooks, self-hosting CI, eval and regression coverage, and a release and deprecation story.

Because the tier report names exactly what blocks the next rung, the climb is a to-do list rather than a guess, and the same ladder serves both a beginner and an advanced maintainer.

Why deterministic grading instead of an LLM judge?

Section titled “Why deterministic grading instead of an LLM judge?”

Trust and CI exit codes. A deterministic Node gate produces the same result every run and exits non-zero on a real failure, which is what lets a plugin prove itself in CI (Gold’s G2, self-hosting CI). An LLM opinion cannot serve as a build gate because it is not reproducible and has no exit code.

Judgment-based evaluation does exist in the toolkit - the behavioral and qualitative modes of askit-evaluate - but it sits beside the gate as opt-in evidence and never decides a pass or fail. The deterministic gate decides conformance; the judgment layer adds color. They do not vote together.

Does grading need the internet or a model?

Section titled “Does grading need the internet or a model?”

No. The gate is portable Node with a single runtime dependency: a YAML parser. It runs anywhere Node 22.12+ does, with no network call and no model invocation. That is precisely what makes it suitable for CI and a pre-commit hook, where reaching out to a model would be slow, costly, and non-deterministic.

The judgment-based modes are the exception by design - behavioral and qualitative evaluation use a model - but they are opt-in and never gate a pass or fail, so the deterministic core stays offline and model-free.

How is this different from a per-skill linter?

Section titled “How is this different from a per-skill linter?”

A linter checks one file at a time. This gate grades the whole library at once - the manifest, every component, cross-agent emission, CI, and lifecycle - and reports the single tier the plugin earns. The unit of governance is the library, not the skill. Rules like manifest-matches-disk, chain-contract integrity, and self-hosting CI only make sense at the library level; a per-skill linter has no way to express them.

Can a Bronze plugin become Gold without rework?

Section titled “Can a Bronze plugin become Gold without rework?”

Yes. The tiers are monotonic: each includes everything below it, so a Bronze plugin grows into Silver and then Gold by adding the machinery each tier certifies, never by redoing the earlier work. The beginner’s first Bronze plugin is the exact foundation the advanced track builds on. The bar rises, and the earlier work still counts.

In practice you run askit-evaluate (or node scripts/check.mjs) at any point to see the highest tier you satisfy and the burndown of what blocks the next one, then close that list at your own pace while CI stays green throughout the climb.

Where do I go next?

Section titled “Where do I go next?”