Skill

A skill package provides a focused, reusable AI capability. Skills are the most common package type — use them when your package does one thing well, like reviewing code, summarizing text, or detecting bugs.

Manifest

A skill package sets "type": "skill" in apkg.json and can include an optional skill object with additional metadata:

{
  "name": "@acme/code-reviewer",
  "version": "1.2.0",
  "type": "skill",
  "description": "AI-powered code review",
  "license": "MIT",
  "skill": {
    "capabilities": ["code-review", "bug-detection"]
  }
}

Skill-specific fields

Field	Type	Description
capabilities	string[]	List of capabilities this skill provides

Tool setup

When you install a skill package with apkg add or apkg install, apkg can automatically configure your AI coding tools. For Claude Code, definition files are copied into:

.claude/skills/@<scope>/<name>/

For example, @acme/code-reviewer creates .claude/skills/@acme/code-reviewer/. If no definition files are found, a summary is generated from the manifest metadata.

See Tool Setup Explained for the generic mechanism, and Skills — Tool Integration for per-tool file paths, formats, and frontmatter behavior.

Example

Create a skill package:

mkdir my-skill && cd my-skill
apkg init
# Choose type: skill

Add a definition file that Claude Code will use directly:

---
name: code-reviewer
description: Reviews code for bugs and quality issues
tools: Read, Grep, Glob
---

You are a code reviewer. Analyze the provided code for bugs,
security issues, and quality improvements.

Publish it:

apkg publish