Manage Instructions and Skills

Use instructions for rules an agent should follow, and skills for reusable workflows. For your first setup, complete your first instruction.

Edit instructions in the right scope

Global instructions apply across projects; project instructions add rules for one repository. Ask your agent:

Add this rule to the appropriate Aikito instruction scope: . Explain the scope, preserve existing instructions, and verify the affected connections.

To inspect and edit manually:

aikito show instructions
aikito edit instructions global
aikito edit instructions example

These edit global/AGENTS.md and projects/example/AGENTS.md in the workspace. Use aikito sync global or aikito sync project example to establish or repair connections, previewing with --dry-run first.

Create a project skill

Create an Aikito skill named review-checklist for project example's review workflow. Inspect existing skills first, write the workflow, synchronize it, and verify the project receives it.

Manually create a skeleton and open its instructions:

aikito add skill review-checklist --project example
aikito edit skill review-checklist

Replace the skeleton with your workflow before synchronizing. The skill source lives under <workspace>/skills/review-checklist/; its project selection is registered in projects/example/agent.toml.

Select an existing skill

Ensure the skill exists in <workspace>/skills/. Add its name to the existing skills array in projects/example/agent.toml, preserving selections you need:

skills = ["durable-memory", "review-checklist"]

Preview, synchronize, and inspect:

aikito sync project example --dry-run
aikito sync project example
aikito show project example
aikito show skill review-checklist

Confirm the selected skill has no missing-resource or conflict finding and its content matches your workflow. Global selections live in skills.toml; inspect its generated comments before editing and use global synchronization.

For Git-tracked skill snapshots, see project skill sync modes.