description: "The skill group map: reusable agent instructions discovered from providers and loaded through the session catalog and skill tool, for users and maintainers navigating the group."
The skill group gives agents and users access to reusable, task-specific instructions on demand. Providers contribute skills — from local project or user directories, bundled packages, or remote services — and the registry merges their catalogs and resolves the winning skill for each name. A consumer publishes the available skills as a durable session catalog and exposes a model-facing `skill` loader tool, so the model sees sorted skill names and descriptions and can load the full instructions of any listed skill; users can also invoke a skill directly with `/name`. Provider type does not change what the model sees, because all model-facing rendering lives in one consumer package. Mount the packages you need: the registry plus at least one provider, and the consumer for model access.
| [`skill/`](skill/README.md) | Registry that merges skill catalogs from any provider and resolves the winning skill for a name | `ctx.skills` |
| [`skill-filesystem/`](skill-filesystem/README.md) | Discovers skills from project, custom, and user directories and watches them for changes | registers on `ctx.skills` |
| [`skill-badge/`](skill-badge/README.md) | Bundles the official "powered by dsh" badge skill, disabled by default | registers on `ctx.skills` |
| [`tool-skill/`](tool-skill/README.md) | Publishes the session skill catalog and the model-facing `skill` loader tool | registers on `ctx.tools` |
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## Related documentation
Start with the subsystem reference for the shared vocabulary, then read the Agent Notes for the design rationale.
- [Skill subsystem reference](../../docs/subsystems/skills.md) — the registry, provider contract, local discovery priority, and the catalog and tool.
- [Skill system Agent Note](../../.agents/notes/implemented/feature/2026-07-05-skill-system.md) — how the family is split and the layered registry design.
- [Skill catalog hot-refresh Agent Note](../../.agents/notes/implemented/feature/2026-07-27-skill-catalog-hot-refresh.md) — the durable initial catalog and replacement lifecycle.
- [Skill invocation policy Agent Note](../../.agents/notes/implemented/feature/2026-07-28-skill-invocation-policy.md) — the model and user invocation controls.
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## Dev Note
<details>
<summary>Working context for maintainers — click to expand</summary>
