Enhance your workflow with skills

Skills provide step-by-step workflows that help your agent perform specific tasks correctly. This guide shows you how to find, install, and use skills to improve your development workflow.

What are skills?

Skills are procedural guides that teach agents how to perform specific workflows. Unlike documentation (which explains what something is), skills explain how to do something step-by-step.

Example skills:

• Debug API endpoints systematically
• Review code for security issues
• Write comprehensive test suites
• Generate API documentation

When you work on tasks, your agent automatically loads relevant skills to follow best practices and team procedures.

Prerequisites

Before installing skills, make sure you've initialized Tessl in your project:

# Initialize Tessl (auto-detects and configures your agent)
tessl init

See the Quick start guide and Custom agent setup for details.

Discovering skills

Browse the registry

Visit the Tessl Registry to browse available skills. You can further filter the results by:

• Tile
• Skill

Search from CLI

Search for skills directly from your terminal:

# Search for testing skills & tiles
tessl search testing

# Search for code review skills & tiles
tessl search "code review"

# Interactive search
tessl search

Ask your agent

You can also ask your agent to find and install skills:

Find me a skill for debugging API endpoints

Installing skills

{% hint style="info" %} Note, if you're installing skills to your OpenClaw agent, you must install skills from your agent's workspace. Check out openclaw for more information. {% endhint %}

By default, skills are installed into your current project (.tessl/tiles/) and tracked in tessl.json. Use --global to install a skill to ~/.tessl/ instead, making it available across all your projects without needing to reinstall it per project.

# Install into the current project (default)
tessl install tessl-labs/debug-api-endpoints

# Install globally, available in all projects
tessl install --global tessl-labs/debug-api-endpoints

From the registry

Install skills by name from the Tessl registry:

# Install a specific skill
tessl install tessl-labs/debug-api-endpoints

# Install multiple skills
tessl install tessl-labs/code-review tessl-labs/testing-workflow

From GitHub repositories

Many open source projects publish skills on GitHub:

# Install from GitHub with interactive skill selection
tessl install https://github.com/anthropics/skills

# Install specific skills by name
tessl install https://github.com/anthropics/skills --skill pdf --skill pptx

# Install from a specific branch or path
tessl install https://github.com/owner/repo/tree/main/skills/my-skill

The registry shows a commit-specific install command when security results are available for that version — use it to install the exact version that was scanned. See Security scores for details.

Using installed skills

Once installed, skills work automatically. Your agent loads relevant skills based on:

• Your task description
• The files you're working with
• The context of your conversation

How skills activate

Skills use "lazy push" - they're automatically loaded when relevant:

Example: Debugging workflow

1. You say: "Debug the failing API endpoint"
2. Agent recognizes this matches the debug-api-endpoints skill
3. Skill is loaded with its step-by-step workflow
4. Agent follows the procedure: check infrastructure → verify auth → validate I/O → test functionality

You don't need to explicitly invoke skills - they activate automatically when needed.

Managing installed skills

List installed skills

View all skills in your project:

tessl list

This shows all installed tiles, including those containing skills.

Update skills

Check for newer versions and reinstall to update:

# Check which installed tiles have updates available
tessl outdated

# Reinstall to get latest version
tessl install tessl-labs/debug-api-endpoints

Remove skills

Uninstall skills you no longer need:

# Remove from the current project
tessl uninstall tessl-labs/debug-api-endpoints

# Remove a globally installed skill
tessl uninstall --global tessl-labs/debug-api-endpoints

Reviewing skill quality

Before installing skills, check their review scores and evaluations in the registry to understand their quality and effectiveness.

Understanding review scores

Skills in the registry show multiple quality indicators:

Review Score (0-100%): Overall quality assessment

• 90%+: High-quality, production-ready
• 70-89%: Good quality, may have minor improvements needed
• Below 70%: Needs work before deployment

Validation Score: Checks for required fields, trigger hints, workflow structure, and metadata completeness

Implementation Score: Code quality in examples, security practices, error handling

Activation Score: How well agents discover and load the skill when relevant

Viewing evaluations

Click on any skill in the registry to see:

• Detailed validation results (what passed/failed)
• Specific recommendations for improvement
• Example usage and trigger conditions
• Community feedback and ratings

Use these scores to choose skills that meet your quality standards before installing.

For more details on skill evaluations, see Evaluating skills.

Security scores

Skills installed from the Tessl Registry are scanned for security vulnerabilities using Snyk. Security scores are shown in the registry UI alongside quality scores so you can assess risk before installing.

Security scanning can produce false positives, and Tessl is designed to give you flexibility in how much weight you give the findings rather than blocking you outright.

Security gating

When you run tessl install or tessl update, if a skill has critical or high security findings, the CLI will ask for your permission before continuing. You can always choose to proceed — installation is never blocked.

To skip the prompt automatically (for example in CI or automated workflows):

tessl install engteam/my-skill --dangerously-ignore-security

Installing a pinned version

The registry shows a commit-specific install command alongside security results, so you can install the exact version that was scanned:

tessl install engteam/my-skill@abc1234

You can also install the latest version at any time by omitting the version, or run tessl update on an already-installed skill.

Reporting false positives

Each security finding in the registry includes a Report Incorrect Findings link. Use it to flag suspected false positives — the Tessl team will investigate and feed confirmed corrections back to Snyk to improve the scanner.

Best practices

Start with popular skills: Browse featured skills in the registry to find well-reviewed, widely-used workflows.

Install skills for your tech stack: Look for skills specific to your frameworks and tools (React, FastAPI, Docker, etc.).

Create team skills: Build custom skills for your team's specific workflows and procedures. See Creating skills.

Review before installing: Check skill review scores in the registry to understand quality and completeness.

Keep skills updated: Reinstall periodically to get improvements and bug fixes.

Troubleshooting

Skill not activating?

• Make sure the skill is installed: tessl list
• Try being more specific in your request to match skill triggers
• Check that your agent has MCP configured: tessl init --agent <name>

Multiple skills conflicting?

• Skills are designed to work together, but if you notice issues, uninstall less relevant ones
• More specific skills usually take precedence over general ones

Need a skill that doesn't exist?

• Create your own: Creating skills
• Request it in the Tessl community
• Check GitHub for open source skills in your domain

Next steps

• Creating skills - Build custom workflows for your team
• Evaluating skills - Understand skill quality scores
• Make your agents smarter with documentation - Combine skills with library docs