agent skills

Codex now supports agent skills: reusable bundles of instructions (plus optional scripts and resources) that help Codex reliably complete specific tasks.

Skills are available in both the Codex CLI and IDE extensions.

You can invoke a skill explicitly by typing $skill-name (for example, $skill-installer or the experimental $create-plan skill after installing it), or let Codex select a skill automatically based on your prompt.

Learn more in the skills documentation.

Folder-based standard (agentskills.io)

Following the open agent skills specification, a skill is a folder with a required SKILL.md and optional supporting files:

my-skill/
  SKILL.md       # Required: instructions + metadata
  scripts/       # Optional: executable code
  references/    # Optional: documentation
  assets/        # Optional: templates, resources

Install skills per-user or per-repo

You can install skills for just yourself in ~/.codex/skills, or for everyone on a project by checking them into .codex/skills in the repository.

Codex also ships with a few built-in system skills to get started, including $skill-creator and $skill-installer. The $create-plan skill is experimental and needs to be installed (for example: $skill-installer install the create-plan skill from the .experimental folder).

Curated skills directory

Codex ships with a small curated set of skills inspired by popular workflows at OpenAI. Install them with $skill-installer, and expect more over time.