---
title: "Do not just download a skill from the internet"
description: "A skill is a folder, and it can contain more than just text. This is how I let my agent look at an interesting skill first and make its own version of it."
language: en
source: https://coachsteff.live/en/skills-niet-zomaar-downloaden
---

# Do not just download a skill from the internet

In a workshop about vibe coding this week, someone asked what a skill actually is. I thought I had already explained it. But I give so many training sessions that I was not sure myself anymore. So I just explained it again. A skill is a step-by-step description of how an agent should do a task. You can see it as a fixed way of working, in plain human language.

And then the next question usually follows immediately. There are thousands of skills online, and someone asked if you cannot just download them. I stay away from that myself. And I would like to explain why.

## What can be inside a skill

A skill is always a folder. Inside it is a file called SKILL.md, with SKILL in capital letters. That is the description your agent reads. In that folder there can be another folder, containing scripts. And that is code your agent can execute.

Imagine someone puts a skill online and includes a little script. The file might have a very innocent name. The moment your agent executes it, it starts searching everywhere on your computer. For passwords, for keys, for everything it finds. Then you have simply installed a virus. And you brought it in yourself, because the description looked useful.

You do not see that immediately either. A skill reads like a friendly text in Markdown. The scripts are next to it, and hardly anyone looks in there. The same goes for plugins, by the way, because a plugin is actually a folder in which a few skills, instructions and connections are packaged together. So that can contain code too.

![In my training I show how you let Claude write a SKILL.md itself for your own way of working, and then test and refine it.](https://coachsteff.live/media/a4ab63d33a238438.webp)