Enhance your workflow with skills
Learn how to discover and install skills that enhance your agent's capabilities with procedural workflows
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 initSee 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:
Ask your agent
You can also ask your agent to find and install skills:
Installing skills
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.
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.
From the registry
Install skills by name from the Tessl registry:
From GitHub repositories
Many open source projects publish skills on GitHub:
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
You say: "Debug the failing API endpoint"
Agent recognizes this matches the debug-api-endpoints skill
Skill is loaded with its step-by-step workflow
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:
This shows all installed tiles, including those containing skills.
Update skills
Check for newer versions and reinstall to update:
Remove skills
Uninstall skills you no longer need:
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):
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:
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 listTry 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
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