Agent Skills
Overview
Agent Skills are pre-built instructions that tell an agent how to perform a specific task. Skills can also bundle scripts, templates, and reference materials. Think of a skill as a structured, repeatable prompt that tells an agent how to complete a specific task in a specific way.
The youdotcom-oss/agent-skills repository packages You.com skills for current web search, URL content extraction, cited research, finance research, and developer integration discovery. The shared skills work with Agent Skills-compatible clients and are also packaged for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, Kimi Code, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Pi, and Hermes.
How Skills Relate to MCP Tools
A skill is an instruction pack. It tells your agent how to approach a task and which tool or API to reach for, but it does not call anything itself. The MCP tools on the You.com server are the callable functions that do the work—you-search runs a web search, you-contents extracts a page, you-answer returns a fast cited answer, you-research synthesizes a cited answer, you-finance does finance research, and you-discover finds the right integration path.
A few skills share a name with the tool they route to. The you-research skill and the you-research MCP tool are different things: the skill is a set of routing instructions, and the tool is what runs when the agent follows them. Each skill routes to one or more of those tools:
Available Skills
Pick the skill that matches the task. Search and URL reading route to the MCP tools by default. Research and finance prefer a local script or a direct API request when YDC_API_KEY is set, with the matching MCP tool as a fallback.
Route web search, URL reading, and cited synthesis to the you-search, you-contents, and you-research MCP tools.
Use keyless basic web search through the you-search MCP tool only. No YDC_API_KEY or OAuth required.
Route research tasks between agent-led search, a Research API script, and the you-research MCP tool as a fallback.
Route finance questions to an existing script, a Finance Research API call, or the you-finance MCP tool as a fallback.
Find the right You.com API, MCP server, SDK, docs page, plugin, or integration path for an agentic project, using the you-discover MCP tool and the Docs MCP Server.
Prerequisites
Most authenticated skills need a You.com API key. The you-free skill is the exception because it uses the free MCP profile with you-search only.
Installation
Install all skills
Install individual skills
Install the shared skills with the universal Agent Skills installer:
Platform Plugins
Several agent platforms can install You.com skills through host-specific plugin paths.
MCP Endpoints
The skills reference the same You.com MCP endpoints documented in the MCP Server guide and the Docs MCP Server guide.
Usage
Once installed, your AI coding agent will automatically activate the relevant skill when you describe what you want. For example:
- “Use you-web to find current docs and cite sources.”
- “Use you-free for a quick web lookup without auth.”
- “Use you-research to investigate this topic across multiple sources.”
- “Use you-finance to research this company and cite market data.”
- “Use you-discover to find the best You.com integration path for my TypeScript agent.”
Each skill provides routing guidance, setup checks, safety rules, and validation steps tailored to the task.