Skills
SlyCode ships with a set of skills that handle the core workflow, plus a library of one-click Sly Actions on every card. Use them as-is, tweak them, or write your own.
What a skill is
A skill is a versioned instruction set the AI loads when it needs a capability: managing kanban cards, gathering design requirements, creating a git checkpoint. Each skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file at its root, optionally bundled with references/, assets/, and scripts/ directories.
SKILL.md opens with YAML frontmatter that identifies the skill, followed by the instructions themselves:
---
provider: claude
name: my-skill
version: 1.2.0
updated: 2026-07-10
description: What this skill does and when to use it
---
# Instructions the AI follows when the skill loadsSkills use semantic versioning, which is what makes the update pipeline work: SlyCode can compare the skill deployed in a project against the latest version and show you exactly what changed before anything is overwritten.
What ships in the box
The bundled skills fall into three groups. System skills run the machinery, workflow skills drive the card lifecycle, and utility skills are safety nets you reach for on demand.
System
| Skill | Purpose |
|---|---|
kanban | Drives all card operations: creating, moving, searching, checklists, problems, questionnaires, status lines, and agent notes. The backbone of the board. |
messaging | Handles communication between you and your AI agents through Telegram (and future channels). Routes voice, text, images, and files. |
atlas | Maintains the Codebase Atlas: proposes, validates, and applies updates to the AI-drawn map that powers Code Mode. |
Workflow
| Skill | Purpose |
|---|---|
design | Starts an interactive requirements-gathering session. The AI asks questions, explores trade-offs, and builds a design document as you talk through the problem. |
feature | Creates a numbered feature specification from a design. Defines what to build, how to structure it, and what done looks like. |
chore | Creates structured plans for maintenance tasks, bug fixes, and refactors. Same discipline as features, applied to the unglamorous work. |
implement | Executes a feature or chore plan. Follows the spec, works through the checklist, and manages the document lifecycle. |
context-priming | Teaches the AI to create and maintain information-dense references for your codebase. Self-updating, area-based, and designed to maximize context quality per token. |
Utility
| Skill | Purpose |
|---|---|
checkpoint | Creates a git checkpoint of all recent changes. Safety net before big moves. |
security-audit | A portable nightly audit that rotates through security domains and maintains a rolling findings card. Read-only by design. |
The store
Skills live in a central store inside your workspace and deploy from there into individual projects. The store is the single source of truth; each project gets its own copy of the skills it uses, so you can tweak a skill for one project without touching the others.
Bundled skills are actively maintained, and updates arrive with the package. Running slycode update installs the latest release and refreshes skills, actions, and provider configs; slycode sync refreshes them in place without a package update.
Nothing is overwritten blind. Importing a skill update shows a per-file diff manifest first: each file marked identical, changed, added, or removed, with expandable line diffs. By default a skill import copies only SKILL.md, preserving any project-specific reference files you have built up alongside it.
Sly Actions
Skills are not the only prompts that ship in the box. SlyCode also includes 28 one-click Sly Actions: prompt buttons that appear on terminals and cards, matched to the stage a card is in. A card in design shows design actions; a card in testing shows review actions.
Actions and skills are distinct. A skill is a capability the AI loads and follows; an action is a prompt you fire with one click, often kicking off a workflow the skills define. Actions get the same versioned update treatment as skills, with an accept, dismiss, and diff-preview flow. See Kanban workflow for how actions drive the card lifecycle.
Cross-provider deployment
SlyCode runs Claude, Codex, and Gemini side by side, and skills work across all three. When a skill deploys to a project, it lands in each provider's expected location: .claude/skills/ for Claude Code, .agents/skills/ for Codex, and .gemini/skills/ for Gemini. Write a skill once and every provider in the project can use it.
Next steps
- Context priming: how the AI builds and maintains its own reference material for your codebase.
- Multi-provider setup: run Claude, Codex, and Gemini side by side.