Anthropic donated the Agent Skills standard to the Linux Foundation

Anthropic announced that it will donate the Agent Skills standard to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation. This format was designed by Anthropic while developing Claude Code, set to launch in October 2025 and open as a cross-platform standard in December. Currently, over 70 agent platforms, including ChatGPT, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, have integrated it.

Anthropic describes Skills as reusable work manuals prepared for AI agents, where developers can write task steps in SKILL.md and attach scripts and reference materials for different agents to read as needed. MCP is responsible for connecting external tools and data, while Skills explain how agents complete specific tasks. What is being donated includes the standard name, logo, GitHub organization, and official website domain.

AAIF was jointly initiated by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block in 2025 and has previously received MCP. In the future, engineers from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google will jointly maintain the Skills standard in their personal capacities, no longer solely led by Anthropic. Vercel statistics show that the skills.sh directory has recorded approximately 1 million skills, with nearly 280 million installations. Snyk has confirmed 76 malicious skills in ClawHub's skill samples, and Anthropic has proposed establishing version control, formal proposal processes, and security guidelines.