Administer

Skill library

What the library holds#

Each organization has one library of skills. Members publish their own, and Valet supplies built-in and catalog skills beside them. Every change to a skill creates a new version. To write and publish a skill, see Skills.

Built-in skills answer coding agents until your organization publishes its own skill under the same name. They aren't rows in the library, so a hosted agent can't attach one until you save your organization's copy. See Replace a built-in skill.

A skill in an agent's own folder ships with every release of that agent. You change it only by changing the agent's source.

valet skills catalog lists the catalog.

How skills reach agents#

The library serves two kinds of agents, and a change reaches each one differently:

• Coding agents read skills over Valet's MCP server while they build. The governance skill tells them to call list_skills and read every skill whose description fits the task. A new skill reaches every connected coding agent at its next read, with nothing to attach, and get_skill always returns the latest version. See Governance.
• Hosted agents carry only the skills attached to them. Valet puts each attached skill into the agent's release, and the agent reads it when a task calls for it. See Agents.

Versions#

Every publish that changes a skill's content creates a new version: v1, v2, and so on. Publishing identical content creates none. Versions never change once they exist, and Valet keeps them after a skill is deleted, so an agent pinned to a version keeps working.

When a member attaches a skill to a hosted agent, they choose whether the agent follows it or pins it:

• org:data-storage follows the latest version. When someone publishes a new version, Valet builds a new release for each agent that follows the skill, after a few minutes' delay. The agent uses it the next time it starts; Valet doesn't restart a running agent to deliver it.
• org:data-storage@v2 pins version 2. The agent changes only when someone changes the pin.

To keep a hosted agent's instructions fixed, pin its skills.

Attachments#

Members attach skills with the attach_skill MCP tool, valet skills attach, or the Skills section of an agent's Blueprint in the dashboard. Attaching or detaching a skill rebuilds a running agent and redeploys it so the change takes effect. Skills attach to agents only; artifacts and apps don't carry skills.

Valet enforces these rules:

• Names are unique per agent. An attached skill can't share a name with another attached skill or with a skill in the agent's folder.
• Deploys check every attached skill. A deploy that names a skill Valet can't find stops and names it.
• Agents can't rewrite attached skills. An agent that edits its own instructions can change the skills in its folder, but not the ones attached from the library. Those belong to the library and come back unchanged with each release.
• An attached skill can't be deleted. Valet refuses to delete an organization skill while a hosted agent has it attached.

Where skill content lives#

Valet stores every skill version in its own private storage. A deploy never fetches a catalog or organization skill from an outside host, so a deleted repository can't break a release. In a dedicated installation, that storage is an S3 bucket inside it.

Manage the library#

The dashboard's Governance page shows the skills that govern coding agents. The Integrations section shows the whole library. To write a standard for coding agents to follow, see Write your own standards.

Who can change skills#

Organizations have no roles, so any member can publish, replace, or delete any skill, governance included. There is no approval step. A change reaches coding agents at their next read and, a few minutes later, every hosted agent that follows the skill.

Valet records when each version was saved, but not who saved it, and no audit log records the change. See Organizations.