Auto-Skill

Just-in-time skill routing for coding agents. Auto-Skill watches what a task needs, hands the agent a verified, relevant technique for it, and gets out of the way. No skill installation, no directory browsing, no maintaining a local skills folder.

Works with Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Does it actually help?

We measured it rather than assumed it. Routing a skill into context can just as easily override a model's own reasoning as inform it — and our first pass at this got that wrong, measurably. After fixing that (the wrapper now says "if you don't already know a correct way to do this, use this technique — it should let you do this better than you could on your own," not "apply this now") and building a judge-graded benchmark to check the result:

Both numbers are real, from the same investigation, on a local weak model (llama3.2:3b) — not cherry-picked, not from a paid frontier model that already knows most things unaided. The first row is what Auto-Skill's mechanism does when the pieces line up (a real capability gap, a routed skill that's actually right for it); the second is closer to what a representative task mix looks like. Read both, not just the good one: backend/bench/WEAK_MODEL_BENCHMARK_REPORT_20260803.md has the full methodology, every regression found along the way, and how each was fixed.

Related MCP server: @skill-hub/mcp-server

Quickstart

Requires Python 3.10+ and git.

git clone https://github.com/auto-skill/auto-skill-connector
cd auto-skill-connector
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
auto-skill login
auto-skill route "build a React landing page with Tailwind"

backend: self-hosted-route
route: skill
tier: full
skill plan (coding):
  policy: ponytail
  primary: frontend-design

next action: apply the returned skill plan in-turn; no skill installation is required

Installing the connector does not install skills — catalog skills stay in Auto-Skill's hosted database and are retrieved per task. Free accounts get 100 routes/month; the CLI session is a 30-day sliding token (refreshes on use).

How it works, briefly

1. A task gets classified (family + action), not just keyword-matched.

2. Auto-Skill composes an ordered plan: an always-on team/task-family policy, plus one primary specialist for this specific task.

3. Only high-confidence, content-hash-verified, risk-0 content is delivered as active guidance (full tier). Ambiguous matches come back as hints, not instructions. Content tied to one specific repo or to an agent's own sandbox filesystem is excluded — it wouldn't generalize to your machine.

4. Your own project/team instructions always win over a routed skill if they conflict.

Full pipeline details, response tiers, and current launch scope: docs/ROUTING.md.

Using it

Three ways to get routing, in increasing order of automation:

Auto Mode never means silent, persistent installation, and it's off until you opt in — read SECURITY.md first, then docs/AUTO_MODE.md for exactly what data moves where and how to turn it off.

Commands

auto-skill search "<task>"
auto-skill route "<task>"
auto-skill route "<task>" --json --show-content
auto-skill preview "<task-or-url>"
auto-skill doctor
auto-skill login
auto-skill enable-hook [--target codex]
auto-skill disable-hook [--target codex]

Full command reference, including route-prompt, feedback, metrics, and the optional developer install/validate export for skill authors: docs/AUTHORING.md.

Repo layout

• Client (repo root): auto_skill_cli.py, mcp_server.py, hooks/ — the package end users install. Talks to the hosted backend over HTTP.

• Backend (backend/): the FastAPI/SQLite service behind skills.autoskill.dev — ingestion, embeddings, routing, content storage, deploy scripts. Own run story and CI; not part of the pip package. See backend/README.md and backend/RUNBOOK.md.

The backend subtree tracks the standalone backend repository at https://github.com/auto-skill/auto-skill.git. After syncing it, update .autoskill-backend-subtree.json and run python scripts/check_backend_subtree.py --check-remote.

Security

Skills are instructions that can shape agent behavior. Content-hash matching detects drift; it does not establish trust. Read SECURITY.md before enabling Auto Mode or installing an unfamiliar skill.

More

• docs/ROUTING.md — pipeline internals, response tiers, current launch scope, what's deferred.

• docs/MCP.md — per-client MCP setup, self-hosting the connector, tunnels.

• docs/AUTO_MODE.md — the opt-in prompt hook, what data it sends, diagnostics and analytics (both off by default).

• docs/AUTHORING.md — turning team standards into a skill, the optional local install/validate export.

• backend/bench/WEAK_MODEL_BENCHMARK_REPORT_20260803.md — does Auto-Skill actually help, measured.

• PRICING.md, ROADMAP.md, SECURITY.md