Skills

Skills are user-defined knowledge packages that give the agent non-standard knowledge – manuals, procedures, tool-specific instructions, and experience the LLM doesn’t have natively. Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file with structured metadata.

How Skills Work

• Skills live in ~/.config/meka/skills/ (platform-specific config dir).
• Each skill is a directory: skills/<name>/SKILL.md.
• Any entry whose name begins with . is skipped at discovery. This covers VCS metadata (.git), editor/IDE state (.vscode, .idea), filesystem artifacts (.DS_Store, .Trash), and any other dotfile or dotdir that may sit alongside your skills.
• SKILL.md starts with a YAML frontmatter block declaring the skill’s metadata, followed by Markdown body content.
• On every prompt, meka discovers all valid skills and lists them in the system prompt with their description.
• The agent invokes a skill by calling the skill tool with the skill name. The tool returns the full body, which the agent follows.
• Skills are available in read, ask, and write permission modes (not in none).

File Format

A skill is a directory under ~/.config/meka/skills/ containing a SKILL.md file:

~/.config/meka/skills/
└── download-videos/
    └── SKILL.md

SKILL.md must begin with a YAML frontmatter block, followed by the skill body:

---
description: Download videos from various websites using yt-dlp. Use when the user wants a video off a URL.
version: "1.0"
author: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
source_url: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/k4yt3x/.../raw/SKILL.md
---

# Download Videos with yt-dlp

## Installation

Install yt-dlp:

\```bash
pip install yt-dlp
\```

## Basic Usage

Download a video:

\```bash
yt-dlp "https://example.com/video"
\```

Required Frontmatter Fields

Skills missing description are skipped at discovery with a warning log. Unknown frontmatter keys are ignored, so a skill authored for Claude Code (which carries extra keys like when_to_use or allowed-tools) still loads.

Optional Frontmatter Fields

Variable Substitution

The skill body may reference these variables, which are expanded when the skill is loaded:

• ${MEKA_SKILL_DIR} – the absolute path to the skill’s directory. Use this to reference bundled helper files (e.g. ${MEKA_SKILL_DIR}/helper.sh).
• ${MEKA_SESSION_ID} – the current session UUID.

Storage Location

How the Agent Uses Skills

When skills are available, the system prompt includes a ## Skills section like:

## Skills

- **download-videos**: Download videos from various websites using yt-dlp. Use when the user wants a video off a URL.
- **deploy-kubernetes**: Deploy services to a K8s cluster. Use when the user asks to deploy to Kubernetes.

The agent loads a skill by calling the skill tool:

skill(name: "download-videos")

The tool returns the full body of SKILL.md (with variables expanded) as its output. The agent then follows the instructions.

Whenever a skill body is loaded — by the skill tool, --skill, /skill, spawn_agent, or meka skill show — it is prefixed with a one-line header naming the skill’s directory:

Base directory for this skill and its bundled files: /home/user/.config/meka/skills/download-videos

This lets the agent locate files bundled alongside SKILL.md even when the body refers to them by bare name (e.g. helper.sh) rather than via ${MEKA_SKILL_DIR}.

Running a Skill in a Sub-Agent

The agent can delegate a skill to a sub-agent by passing the skill parameter to the spawn_agent tool. The sub-agent runs the skill in its own fresh context and returns a report, keeping the skill’s instructions out of the parent’s conversation:

spawn_agent(skill: "summarize-financial-news")
spawn_agent(skill: "summarize-financial-news", prompt: "focus on UK markets")

prompt is optional when skill is given; if both are supplied, prompt is prepended to the skill body as extra direction — the same ordering as meka --skill <name> [prompt].

Invoking a Skill from the CLI

Any skill can be triggered directly from the command line with --skill <name>. The rendered body becomes the first user turn, and meka drops into the interactive REPL after the turn finishes:

meka --skill download-videos "https://example.com/video"

The positional [PROMPT] argument, if given, is prepended to the skill body as extra context — equivalent to typing /skill download-videos https://example.com/video in the REPL.

To run the skill and exit immediately (useful for scripts), pair with --oneshot:

meka --oneshot --skill download-videos "https://example.com/video"

To invoke a skill mid-session inside the REPL, use the slash command instead:

/skill download-videos
/skill download-videos this URL specifically

Updating Skills

A skill that declares a source_url can be re-fetched and replaced on disk with meka skill update:

meka skill update download-videos   # update one skill
meka skill update --all             # dry run: lists what would update
meka skill update --all --yes       # apply the updates

source_url should be an https:// link to a raw SKILL.md (e.g. a GitHub raw URL or a gist raw URL). The fetch is validated — the response must parse as a valid skill — before the on-disk file is atomically replaced, so a 404 page or a malformed file leaves the existing skill untouched. If the fetched content is byte-identical to what’s on disk, nothing is written.

meka skill update --all without --yes is a dry run: it lists every skill that would be updated and applies nothing. This is the confirmation gate for a bulk remote fetch — re-run with --yes to apply.

Only the SKILL.md file is fetched. Helper scripts bundled alongside it in the skill directory are not updated this way — source_url-based update is for single-file skills.

Trust note. A skill body is instructions the agent follows. meka skill update replaces that content with whatever the source_url currently serves — review the source you point it at, and prefer --all (with its dry-run default) over blind updates.

Tips

• Use short, unambiguous skill names (e.g. setup-postgres, not pg). The name is what the agent sees and calls.
• Write description concisely, and fold the “use when…” trigger into it – it goes into every system prompt and consumes tokens.
• Keep each skill focused on a single topic or procedure. Spawn multiple skills rather than one giant one.
• Bundle supporting files in the skill directory and reference them with ${MEKA_SKILL_DIR}/file.ext.
• Skills are re-discovered on every prompt, so you can add, edit, or remove skills mid-session without restarting meka.