Building Skills
Writing Instructions
Best practices for writing effective skill prompts.
The instructions field is the most important part of your skill. Well-written instructions produce consistent, high-quality agent behavior.
Be Specific
Vague instructions produce vague results. Describe exactly what the agent should and should not do.
Use Examples
Include at least 3 input/output examples. Models learn from demonstrations more reliably than from abstract descriptions.
Structure with XML Tags
text
<role>You are an expert React developer.</role>
<context>The project uses TypeScript and Tailwind CSS.</context>
<task>Generate accessible, production-ready components.</task>i
Keep your instructions under 2000 tokens for best performance. Longer instructions increase latency and can confuse models.