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Skills

A skill is a small, focused prompt package with a deterministic trigger. When the model decides a skill is relevant, its contents are injected into context on the spot. Skills are how Ptah keeps expertise modular: one skill per topic, versioned, and reusable across providers.

What a skill looks like

skills/
└── review-security/
    ├── SKILL.md              # Definition + trigger description
    └── references/           # Optional lazy-loaded content
        ├── owasp-top-10.md
        └── threat-model.md

---
name: review-security
description: Security vulnerability review — OWASP-based assessment across any tech stack. Use when the user asks for a security review or mentions vulnerabilities, auth, or hardening.
---

# Security Review Protocol

## Phase 1: Authentication & authorization

...

How Ptah decides which skill to invoke

Every skill’s description field is the trigger. The orchestrator scans available skills and picks the ones whose descriptions match the user’s intent. Matching is LLM-based, not keyword-based, so phrasing matters:

Good: “Use when the user writes Angular forms, reactive forms, or form validation.”
Poor: “Angular forms stuff.”

Ptah goes beyond its own sessions. Every enabled plugin skill is symlinked (junctioned on Windows) into the active workspace at:

<workspace>/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/

This is the folder the wider AI-tooling ecosystem reads — Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, Codex CLI. By populating it automatically, Ptah ensures that when you switch tools for a specific task, you don’t lose the knowledge pack.

flowchart LR
    A["~/.ptah/plugins/ptah-core/skills/orchestration/"] -- junction --> B[".claude/skills/orchestration/"]
    C["~/.ptah/plugins/ptah-angular/skills/angular-frontend-patterns/"] -- junction --> D[".claude/skills/angular-frontend-patterns/"]
    B --> E["Ptah"]
    B --> F["Copilot"]
    B --> G["Cursor"]
    D --> E
    D --> F
    D --> G

Junction lifecycle

Event	Ptah’s action
Plugin enabled	Create junctions for every skill in the plugin
Plugin disabled	Remove the junctions (originals stay in `~/.ptah/plugins/`)
Plugin updated	Junctions auto-resolve — no re-creation needed
Workspace first opened	Ensure junctions exist for all enabled plugins

Platform notes

Platform	Link type	Needs special permission?
Windows	Directory junction	No (junctions don’t need admin)
macOS	Symbolic link	No
Linux	Symbolic link	No

Skill vs. agent — when to use which

Skill	Agent
Knowledge pack injected into current context	Separate sub-session with its own context window
No token isolation	Token-isolated — good for large background work
Invoked automatically when description matches	Invoked explicitly via `ptah_agent_spawn` or orchestrator
Best for: patterns, checklists, reference material	Best for: multi-step execution, long-running tasks

Next steps