Built-in Skills

Ciri ships with 17 built-in skills that are bootstrapped into the global core harness (~/.local/share/ciri/skills/) on first run. These skills give Ciri immediate, expert-level capabilities across document processing, design, coding, communications, and more — in any workspace, without needing to train per-project.

Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description) and a playbook, plus a scripts/ folder with supporting Python scripts.

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Skill Registry

Document Processing

Skill	Trigger	What Ciri Can Do
pdf	Any .pdf file or PDF task	Read, merge, split, rotate, watermark, extract tables/images, OCR scanned PDFs, fill forms
docx	.docx, "Word doc", reports, memos	Create new documents with tables/headers/footers/TOC, edit XML directly, add tracked changes, insert comments, convert to PDF
pptx	.pptx, "deck", "slides", "presentation"	Create slide decks from scratch or templates, edit existing slides, convert to images, visual QA
xlsx	.xlsx, .csv, spreadsheet tasks	Build/edit Excel models with zero formula errors, create charts, clean messy data, recalculate formulas

Design & Creative

Skill	Trigger	What Ciri Can Do
canvas-design	Poster, visual art, static design	Create .png/.pdf designs using programmatic layout and design philosophy
algorithmic-art	Generative art, p5.js, flow fields	Create animated/interactive algorithmic art with seeded randomness
frontend-design	Web components, landing pages, dashboards	Build production-grade HTML/CSS/React UIs with high design quality
web-artifacts-builder	Complex multi-component HTML artifacts	Multi-file React + Tailwind + shadcn/ui applications
theme-factory	"Style this with a theme"	Apply 10 preset or custom-generated themes to any artifact (slides, docs, HTML)
brand-guidelines	Brand colors, Anthropic style	Apply brand-consistent colors and typography to any artifact
slack-gif-creator	"Make a GIF for Slack"	Animated GIFs optimized for Slack's constraints (file size, dimensions, fps)

Communications & Content

Skill	Trigger	What Ciri Can Do
internal-comms	Status reports, newsletters, incident reports	Write structured internal communications in company formats
doc-coauthoring	Writing docs, proposals, specs	Guide structured documentation co-authoring with iterative refinement

Engineering & Integration

Skill	Trigger	What Ciri Can Do
mcp-builder	"Build an MCP server", API integration	Create high-quality MCP servers in Python (FastMCP) or TypeScript (MCP SDK)
webapp-testing	Test local web app, UI automation	Write Playwright scripts, manage server lifecycle, capture screenshots

Meta Skills (Ciri's Self-Improvement)

Skill	Trigger	What Ciri Can Do
skill-creator	"Create a skill", "Add a capability"	Guide the creation of new SKILL.md-based capability packages
subagent-builder	"Create a subagent", new agent role	Guide YAML/Python-based subagent creation for the multi-agent system

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Skill Anatomy

Every skill follows the same structure:

skills/<skill-name>/
├── SKILL.md        ← Frontmatter (name, description) + playbook for Ciri
├── LICENSE.txt     ← License terms
└── scripts/        ← Optional Python helper scripts
    └── *.py

SKILL.md Frontmatter

---
name: my-skill
description: |
  When to use this skill (written for Ciri's routing logic — be specific about triggers).
  Include example phrases that should activate this skill.
license: Proprietary / MIT / Apache-2.0
---

# My Skill

Playbook content here — how Ciri should approach tasks with this skill.

The description field is what the SkillsMiddleware and the routing logic uses to determine when to activate a skill. Write it as if explaining to Ciri "use me when...".

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How Skills Are Loaded

1. On first run, built-in skills are copied from src/skills/ to ~/.local/share/ciri/skills/.
2. On every subsequent turn, SkillsMiddleware loads all skills from both harness levels.
3. Each skill's SKILL.md content is injected into the system prompt so Ciri knows when and how to use it.
4. Helper scripts are available for Ciri to call via the execute_script tool or shell tools.

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Adding Your Own Skills

Via Ciri (recommended)

You > Create a skill for analyzing our internal P&L spreadsheet format

Ciri will invoke the skill_builder subagent, which uses the skill-creator skill to scaffold and populate a new skill package. The result is placed in the core harness (globally available) or the project harness (if you request it to be project-specific).

Manually

Create a directory in .ciri/skills/<your-skill-name>/ with a SKILL.md:

---
name: my-domain-skill
description: Use this skill when the user asks about quarterly financial reporting or P&L analysis.
---

# Quarterly Financial Reporting

## Approach

When analyzing a P&L document:
1. Always check revenue vs. prior period first
2. Flag any YoY variance > 10%
...

Then run /sync to hot-reload.

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Skill Lookup Order

When Ciri decides to activate a skill:

1. Checks ~/.local/share/ciri/skills/ (core harness — global)
2. Falls back to .ciri/skills/ (project harness)

If a skill with the same name exists in both, the core harness version wins.