Do I need to join the Agentic AI Foundation to use or change Agent Skills?

No. Anthropic says anyone can use the Agent Skills standard or contribute to it without becoming an Agentic AI Foundation member. Proposed specification changes are discussed in the open on the agentskills GitHub repository and on the project's Discord, where developers can comment before changes land.

Will existing Claude skills keep working after the donation?

Agent Skills keeps the same format after the move: a folder with a SKILL.md file holding a name, a description and instructions, plus optional scripts and assets. The donation changes who governs the standard, not the file layout. Anthropic says it will keep the standard open, community-driven and vendor-neutral, and future changes will come through versioned releases.

Which tools already support Agent Skills?

Anthropic counts more than 70 agent platforms that have integrated Agent Skills, naming ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code among them, alongside Claude Code where skills began. The agentskills.io site keeps a client showcase of compatible agents. Anthropic also reports 1 million published skills and nearly 280 million installs.

How does the Agent Skills donation compare with the MCP donation?

Agent Skills follows the same path as the Model Context Protocol, which Anthropic gave to the Agentic AI Foundation when it co-founded the foundation with Block and OpenAI under the Linux Foundation. MCP standardizes how agents connect to tools and data; Agent Skills standardizes how agents load packaged instructions and workflows. Both now sit under the same neutral governance.

What is on the Agent Skills roadmap?

Anthropic lists three proposed items for Agent Skills under the foundation: versioned releases of the specification, a formal proposal process for changes, and security guidance for people who author and install skills. These are proposals, so the maintainers from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and other companies will shape the final plan in public.

Anthropic · 2026-10-22 · major

Agent Skills joins the Agentic AI Foundation — Anthropic hands over the standard

Anthropic is donating the Agent Skills open standard to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation, along with its name, logo, GitHub organization and the agentskills.io domain. Engineers from several labs will maintain it.

Anthropic announcement graphic for donating Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation

The SKILL.md format behind Claude's skills now lives at a vendor-neutral foundation, like MCP before it.

Quick facts

Donated by	Anthropic
New home	Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation)
What moves	Spec, name, logo, GitHub org, agentskills.io
Lead maintainers	David Soria Parra, Mahesh Murag
Adoption	70+ agent platforms, 1M skills published
Repo license	Apache-2.0 code, CC-BY-4.0 docs

What is it?

Anthropic is moving the Agent Skills open standard to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), the Linux Foundation fund it co-founded with Block and OpenAI. The donation covers the specification plus the Agent Skills name and logo, the agentskills GitHub organization and the agentskills.io domain. AAIF already holds the Model Context Protocol, which Anthropic donated earlier.

How does it work?

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file that holds a name, a description and instructions, and can bundle scripts, references and assets. Agents load skills in three stages: they read only names and descriptions at startup, pull in the full SKILL.md when a task matches, and then run any bundled code. Under the foundation, engineers from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and other companies maintain the standard as individuals, with David Soria Parra and Mahesh Murag as lead maintainers.

Why does it matter?

Anthropic says more than 70 agent platforms, including ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code, already load skills, and 1 million skills have been published. Neutral governance means a skill written once should keep working across vendors. The proposed roadmap adds versioned releases, a formal proposal process and security guidance for people who write and install skills.

Who is it for?

developers who write or ship agent skills, and teams building agent platforms

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to join the Agentic AI Foundation to use or change Agent Skills?: No. Anthropic says anyone can use the Agent Skills standard or contribute to it without becoming an Agentic AI Foundation member. Proposed specification changes are discussed in the open on the agentskills GitHub repository and on the project's Discord, where developers can comment before changes land.
Will existing Claude skills keep working after the donation?: Agent Skills keeps the same format after the move: a folder with a SKILL.md file holding a name, a description and instructions, plus optional scripts and assets. The donation changes who governs the standard, not the file layout. Anthropic says it will keep the standard open, community-driven and vendor-neutral, and future changes will come through versioned releases.
Which tools already support Agent Skills?: Anthropic counts more than 70 agent platforms that have integrated Agent Skills, naming ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code among them, alongside Claude Code where skills began. The agentskills.io site keeps a client showcase of compatible agents. Anthropic also reports 1 million published skills and nearly 280 million installs.
How does the Agent Skills donation compare with the MCP donation?: Agent Skills follows the same path as the Model Context Protocol, which Anthropic gave to the Agentic AI Foundation when it co-founded the foundation with Block and OpenAI under the Linux Foundation. MCP standardizes how agents connect to tools and data; Agent Skills standardizes how agents load packaged instructions and workflows. Both now sit under the same neutral governance.
What is on the Agent Skills roadmap?: Anthropic lists three proposed items for Agent Skills under the foundation: versioned releases of the specification, a formal proposal process for changes, and security guidance for people who author and install skills. These are proposals, so the maintainers from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and other companies will shape the final plan in public.

Try it

Read the spec at https://agentskills.io and follow changes at https://github.com/agentskills/agentskills