Creating Agent Skills

Overview

This guide walks you through adding agent skills to an existing use case. By the end, your HTTP endpoints and scheduled workflows will be discoverable and usable by any Claude-based agent.

New use cases get skills automatically. When you run codika init, the scaffolded use case includes example skills for both the HTTP workflow and the scheduled workflow. This guide is for adding skills to existing use cases or customizing the defaults.

Prefer automation? The Builder System agents create use cases with correctly configured agent skills out of the box. Use this guide when you need to add or customize skills manually.

Step 1: Identify triggerable workflows

Open your config.ts and list all workflows with http or schedule trigger types. Skip sub-workflows, data ingestion, and service event workflows.

# Quick check — list workflow files that are NOT sub-workflows
grep -l '"type": "n8n-nodes-base.webhook"' workflows/*.json
grep -l '"type": "n8n-nodes-base.scheduleTrigger"' workflows/*.json

For each triggerable workflow, note:

workflowTemplateId from config.ts
Trigger type (http or schedule)
Input schema fields (for HTTP)
Output schema fields
Integration UIDs used
Credit cost

Step 2: Create the skills directory

mkdir -p skills

For each triggerable workflow, create a subdirectory:

mkdir skills/main-workflow
mkdir skills/scheduled-report

Step 3: Write SKILL.md files

For HTTP workflows

Create skills/{name}/SKILL.md:

---
name: {usecase-slug}-{action}
description: {Third-person description. What it does and what it returns.}
workflowTemplateId: {workflow-template-id}
---

# {Workflow Name}

{One-line description with integrations used.}

## How to trigger

\`\`\`bash
codika trigger {workflow-template-id} --payload-file - <<'EOF'
{
  "field1": "example value",
  "field2": 42
}
EOF
\`\`\`

## Input

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description |
|-----------|------|----------|-------------|
| field1 | string | yes | What this field does |
| field2 | number | no | What this field does |

## Output

\`\`\`json
{
  "result": "example output",
  "timestamp": "2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}
\`\`\`

## Notes

- Cost: {N} credit(s)
- Uses: {Integration1}, {Integration2}

For scheduled workflows

---
name: {usecase-slug}-{action}
description: {Third-person description. Mention the schedule AND manual trigger.}
workflowTemplateId: {workflow-template-id}
---

# {Workflow Name}

Runs automatically on a schedule ({schedule description}).

## Schedule

`{cron expression}` — {Human-readable} ({timezone})

## Manual trigger (for testing)

\`\`\`bash
codika trigger {workflow-template-id}
\`\`\`

No payload required.

## Output

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| field1 | string | Description |

## Notes

- Cost: {N} credit(s)
- Uses: {Integration1}, {Integration2}

Step 4: Validate

codika verify use-case .

Check for skill-related findings:

SKILL-STRUCTURE — Missing SKILL.md in a skills subdirectory
SKILL-NAME-FORMAT — Name too long, wrong characters, or reserved words
SKILL-WORKFLOW-REF — workflowTemplateId doesn’t match any workflow
SKILL-DUPLICATE — Duplicate names or workflowTemplateIds

Step 5: Deploy

codika deploy use-case .

Skills are automatically collected and sent with the deployment. No config.ts changes needed.

Step 6: Verify agent access

# Download the skills you just deployed
codika get skills

# Or check the JSON output
codika get skills --json

You should see all your skills listed with their names, descriptions, and content.

Naming rules

The name field must follow Claude’s naming constraints:

Rule	Example
Max 64 characters	`wat-event-weekly-digest` (24 chars)
Lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens only	`propale-generate-proposal`
No spaces or underscores	`my-skill` not `my_skill` or `my skill`
No reserved words	Cannot contain “anthropic” or “claude”

Convention: Prefix with your use case slug: wat-, propale-, crm-.

Description rules

Rule	Good	Bad
Third person	”Sends a message to…"	"Use this to send…”
Non-empty	”Generates a weekly digest"	""
Max 1024 characters	Keep it concise	Don’t write a paragraph
Include what AND when	”Sends reminders daily at 8 AM. Can be manually triggered."	"Sends reminders”

Progressive disclosure for complex skills

If a skill needs more than 500 lines, split into referenced files:

generate-proposal/
├── SKILL.md              # Overview + trigger command + basic I/O
├── INPUT-REFERENCE.md    # Detailed field-by-field input schema
└── EXAMPLES.md           # Multiple usage examples with different payloads

Reference them from SKILL.md:

For detailed input schema, see [INPUT-REFERENCE.md](INPUT-REFERENCE.md).
For more examples, see [EXAMPLES.md](EXAMPLES.md).

Claude reads SKILL.md first, then loads referenced files only when needed.

Checklist

Before deploying:

File Uploads Builder System

Getting Started

Why Codika

Core Concepts

Guides

Builder System

Examples

Overview

Step 1: Identify triggerable workflows

Step 2: Create the skills directory

Step 3: Write SKILL.md files

For HTTP workflows

For scheduled workflows

Step 4: Validate

Step 5: Deploy

Step 6: Verify agent access

Naming rules

Description rules

Progressive disclosure for complex skills

Checklist

​Overview

​Step 1: Identify triggerable workflows

​Step 2: Create the skills directory

​Step 3: Write SKILL.md files

​For HTTP workflows

​For scheduled workflows

​Step 4: Validate

​Step 5: Deploy

​Step 6: Verify agent access

​Naming rules

​Description rules

​Progressive disclosure for complex skills

​Checklist

Overview

Step 1: Identify triggerable workflows

Step 2: Create the skills directory

Step 3: Write SKILL.md files

For HTTP workflows

For scheduled workflows

Step 4: Validate

Step 5: Deploy

Step 6: Verify agent access

Naming rules

Description rules

Progressive disclosure for complex skills

Checklist