Anthropic opens Agent Skills standard for dynamic agents

What happened

Anthropic published Agent Skills as an open specification and SDK on December 18, 2025. The release lets AI agents discover and load specialized instructions and resources at runtime. Anthropic describes Agent Skills as the next layer after the Model Context Protocol (MCP), targeting enterprise and workplace AI scenarios. (Anthropic engineering blog; VentureBeat; Axios.)

Technical details

The Agent Skills spec defines how platforms register and advertise capability packages and how agents invoke them. The SDK implements standardized discovery, authorization, and runtime loading so agents can adapt behavior without bespoke integrations. The work builds on MCP’s tool-integration model while emphasizing enterprise controls and cross-platform interoperability. VentureBeat and The Decoder highlight Anthropic’s focus on governance and vendor-neutral interfaces. (Anthropic; VentureBeat; The Decoder.)

Implications

For IT and ML teams, Agent Skills can speed integration of domain-specific functions into agentic workflows and reduce the need for custom connectors. Real-world adoption will depend on platform support and third-party skill authors; Anthropic invited developers and vendors to implement and provide feedback. (Anthropic; Axios.)

Why It Matters

• Reduces engineering overhead: a standard discovery and loading model lowers custom integration work when adding domain-specific capabilities to agents.
• Improves interoperability: open skill packages let multiple platforms host and consume the same capabilities, reducing vendor lock-in and simplifying multi-platform deployments.
• Supports enterprise adoption: built-in authorization and governance controls align with workplace security needs, speeding rollout where compliance and oversight matter.