a-i--skills

Core vs Community Tiers

Skills are organized into two quality tiers, following a pattern similar to LangChain’s langchain-core / langchain-community split. Tiers set expectations for quality, completeness, and maintenance.

Tiers

Core

Core skills are curated and maintained by the repository team. They meet a higher quality bar and are recommended as starting points.

Requirements for core tier:

complexity field set (beginner, intermediate, or advanced)
time_to_learn field set (5min, 30min, 1hour, or multi-hour)
tags field with at least one keyword
triggers field with at least one activation condition
Description between 20 and 600 characters
All referenced files (references/, assets/) must exist

Example frontmatter:

---
name: tdd-workflow
description: Guide test-driven development with red-green-refactor cycles, test doubles, and coverage strategies.
license: MIT
tier: core
complexity: intermediate
time_to_learn: 30min
tags: [testing, tdd, workflow, development]
triggers: [test-driven, tdd, write tests first]
---

Community

Community skills are contributed by the community and pass standard validation. They may not have all optional fields populated.

Requirements for community tier:

Valid name matching directory name
description between 20 and 600 characters
Valid frontmatter format

Community is the default tier. Skills without an explicit tier field are treated as community.

The `tier` Field

Add the tier field to your skill’s YAML frontmatter:

---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill does.
license: MIT
tier: community
---

Valid values are core and community. The validator rejects any other value.

Validation

The validator applies stricter rules to core skills. Running:

python3 scripts/validate_skills.py --collection example --unique

For core-tier skills, the validator checks that complexity, time_to_learn, tags, and triggers are all present and valid. Community skills only need to pass the standard checks.

Promotion Path

Community skills can be promoted to core after review:

Fill in required fields. Add complexity, time_to_learn, tags, and triggers to the frontmatter.
Verify references. Ensure all referenced files exist and links are valid (--check-links).
Set the tier. Change tier: community to tier: core.
Open a pull request. The reviewer will confirm the skill meets core quality standards.
Pass validation. The CI pipeline applies core-tier rules automatically.

How Tiers Appear

Search results: Core skills are prioritized when multiple skills match a query.
Registry listings: Core skills are marked with a [core] badge.
Documentation: The categories page groups skills by tier within each category.

Summary

Aspect	Core	Community
`tier` value	`core`	`community` (or omitted)
Required fields	name, description, complexity, time_to_learn, tags, triggers*	name, description
Maintained by	Repository team	Contributors
Promotion	N/A	Submit PR with all required fields
Validation	Strict	Standard

* Bundle skills (those with an includes field) are exempt from the triggers requirement.