What is the difference between Agent Skills and AGENTS.md?

The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both. They answer different questions: Agent Skills is a step 5 (Act) standard, AGENTS.md step 4 (Read), so they are not substitutes. Agent Skills answers: How can reusable, on-demand procedural instructions and bundled resources be packaged so any compatible agent can load and run them? AGENTS.md answers: What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository?

When should I use Agent Skills instead of AGENTS.md?

Choose Agent Skills when your question is “How can reusable, on-demand procedural instructions and bundled resources be packaged so any compatible agent can load and run them?” and you accept its maturity: status "Active open format under the Linux Foundation Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), adopted across 35+ agent products", implementation multi-implementation. Choose AGENTS.md when your question is “What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository?” and you accept its maturity: status ""An open format... regardless of which coding agent you use"; explicitly not proprietary to any one tool", implementation multi-implementation (agents.md (site claims over 60,000 AGENTS.md files across open-source GitHub repositories, via a path:AGENTS.md NOT is:fork NOT is:archived code search)).

Can Agent Skills and AGENTS.md be used together?

Yes. Agent Skills and AGENTS.md are listed as complementary on this map and are commonly deployed together on the same origin or agent.

Agent Skills vs AGENTS.md

The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both. They answer different questions: Agent Skills is a step 5 (Act) standard, AGENTS.md step 4 (Read), so they are not substitutes.

5 Act Agent Skills · 4 Read AGENTS.md

	Agent Skills	AGENTS.md
Lifecycle step	5 Act: Do something for me	4 Read: Give me the content
Answers	How can reusable, on-demand procedural instructions and bundled resources be packaged so any compatible agent can load and run them?	What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository?
Governed by	Originated by Anthropic and donated on 22 October 2026 to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF); developed in the open at github.com/agentskills/agentskills alongside MCP and A2A	Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a Linux Foundation project
Status (issuer's words)	Active open format under the Linux Foundation Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), adopted across 35+ agent products	"An open format... regardless of which coding agent you use"; explicitly not proprietary to any one tool
Version	unversioned living spec (agentskills.io/specification)	current site guidance (living document) (2026-09)
Form / transport	document format	well-known file
Found at	/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json	AGENTS.md
Implementation	multi-implementation	multi-implementation — agents.md (site claims over 60,000 AGENTS.md files across open-source GitHub repositories, via a path:AGENTS.md NOT is:fork NOT is:archived code search)
Evidence	3 verified	2 reported, 1 verified
Primary use case	Describe an agent's capabilities	Serve readable content to agents
Last verified	2026-10-23 (current)	2026-10-23 (current)
Specification	https://agentskills.io/specification	https://agents.md

When to use which

Choose Agent Skills when your question is “How can reusable, on-demand procedural instructions and bundled resources be packaged so any compatible agent can load and run them?” and you accept its maturity: status "Active open format under the Linux Foundation Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), adopted across 35+ agent products", implementation multi-implementation.
Choose AGENTS.md when your question is “What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository?” and you accept its maturity: status ""An open format... regardless of which coding agent you use"; explicitly not proprietary to any one tool", implementation multi-implementation (agents.md (site claims over 60,000 AGENTS.md files across open-source GitHub repositories, via a path:AGENTS.md NOT is:fork NOT is:archived code search)).

Guidance is derived from the two records (question, status, implementation, prerequisites, pairings), not from opinion. Each record's page carries its numbered references.

Read the full articles

Agent Skills: How can reusable, on-demand procedural instructions and bundled resources be packaged so any compatible agent can load and run them?
AGENTS.md: What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository?

Ask the MCP server to compare any two: the compare-protocols prompt, or get on both ids. Connect.

anthropic-agent-skills-format.json · agents-md.json · Markdown