Skill Catalog Specification
Defines the structure and governance of skill-atoms, the catalog of AI agent skill definitions covering capabilities, tool use patterns, and task specializations.
| id | schema-atoms/design-spec/skill-catalog-spec |
| authors | convergent-systems-co |
| conforms_to | schema-atoms/design-spec/[email protected] |
| created | 2026-05-24 |
Skill Catalog Specification
Catalog: skill-atoms.com
Version: 1.0.0-draft
Conforms to: schema-atoms/design-spec/[email protected]
Purpose
The skill catalog holds structured definitions of AI agent skills — the discrete, named capabilities that agents can acquire and invoke. Each atom specifies what a skill does, what tools or APIs it requires, what inputs it accepts, and what outputs it produces, enabling agents to be assembled from a library of auditable, versioned capabilities.
Skill atoms are the unit of agent capability extension. They decouple capability definition from agent configuration, so a skill can be adopted by multiple agents and evolved independently across catalog versions.
Atom Classes
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
tool-skill |
A skill backed by a callable tool or API — specifies the tool schema and invocation pattern |
reasoning-skill |
A skill that encodes a reasoning pattern or chain-of-thought template without external tool calls |
retrieval-skill |
A skill that queries a knowledge source and synthesizes a response |
workflow-skill |
A skill that orchestrates a multi-step workflow as a single agent-callable action |
Consumers
agent-atoms— agent definitions declare which skills they have access toprompt-atoms— system prompts may include skill descriptions to inform the model of available capabilities- Olympus runtime — resolves skill atoms at agent initialization and enforces declared tool access
knowledge-atoms— retrieval skills depend on knowledge atoms as their data source
Relationship to Other Catalogs
- agent-atoms: agents are the runtime host for skills; a skill is a transferable capability, an agent is the executor.
- prompt-atoms: skills surface to the model through prompt descriptions; the prompt atom and skill atom together define what the model knows it can do and how.
- workflow-atoms: workflow-skills wrap workflow atoms into agent-callable single actions, bridging the two catalogs.
atom.toml
id = "schema-atoms/design-spec/skill-catalog-spec"
version = "1.0.0-draft"
content_hash = "a7d3f2ffe5a69db68e897e0021222a3fd2e83a3baa2f54e3a48333e3d2103647"
lifecycle = "draft"
created_at = "2026-05-24T00:00:00Z"
[spec]
class = "design-spec"
title = "Skill Catalog Specification"
summary = "Defines the structure and governance of skill-atoms, the catalog of AI agent skill definitions covering capabilities, tool use patterns, and task specializations."
authors = ["convergent-systems-co"]
conforms_to = "schema-atoms/design-spec/[email protected]"
asset = "spec.md"