Agent Development

by anthropics

Agent Development is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by anthropics in claude-plugins-official.

33.5K stars3.8K forkson anthropics/claude-plugins-officialAdded 2026/08/13Repository updated 2026/08/13

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

claude-codemcpskills

Install in seconds

Install Agent Development

Copy Agent Development into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official/tree/main/plugins/plugin-dev/skills/agent-development ~/.claude/skills/agent-development

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: plugins/plugin-dev/skills/agent-development/SKILL.md in anthropics/claude-plugins-official
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/agent-development
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Agent Development does

Agent Development guides the creation of autonomous agents for Claude Code plugins, covering agent structure, triggering conditions, system prompts, and best practices. Use it when building subagents or configuring agent frontmatter.

Agent Development is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Agent Development comes from a repository tagged claude-code, mcp and skills.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Agent Development for Claude Code Plugins

Overview

Agents are autonomous subprocesses that handle complex, multi-step tasks independently. Understanding agent structure, triggering conditions, and system prompt design enables creating powerful autonomous capabilities.

Key concepts:

Agents are FOR autonomous work, commands are FOR user-initiated actions
Markdown file format with YAML frontmatter
Triggering via description field with examples
System prompt defines agent behavior
Model and color customization

Agent File Structure

Complete Format

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Agent Development

What else does anthropics publish alongside Agent Development?
Agent Development is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from anthropics/claude-plugins-official, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Build MCP App, Build MCP Server and Build MCPB. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Agent Development does, and is maintained by anthropics in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the anthropics/claude-plugins-official page.
How does Agent Development compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Agent Development ranks #165 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Agent Development against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.