Question Answering

by microsoft

Question Answering is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by microsoft in SkillOpt.

16K stars1.5K forkson microsoft/SkillOptAdded 2026/08/14Repository updated 2026/08/13

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

agent-skillsself-evolving-agents

Install in seconds

Install Question Answering

Copy Question Answering 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/microsoft/SkillOpt/tree/main/ckpt/searchqa ~/.claude/skills/searchqa

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/microsoft/SkillOpt.git

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

In this catalog

Source file: ckpt/searchqa/gpt5.5_skill.md in microsoft/SkillOpt
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/searchqa
Collection: One of 12 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Question Answering does

Question Answering normalizes short-answer trivia responses by applying rules for concise answer form, evidence matching, and clue interpretation. Use it when an agent must produce accurate, well-formed answers for QA or crossword-style questions.

Question Answering is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Question Answering comes from a repository tagged agent-skills and self-evolving-agents.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Question Answering Skill

(No learned rules yet. Rules will be added through the reflection process.)

Concise Answer Normalization

Prefer the shortest unambiguous answer that directly satisfies the question. Do not include generic descriptors, legal suffixes, or expanded formal names unless the question specifically asks for the full official name or the descriptor is necessary to identify the entity.

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

Frequently asked about Question Answering

What else does microsoft publish alongside Question Answering?
Question Answering is one of 12 skills that DirSkills catalogs from microsoft/SkillOpt, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include ALFWorld Embodied Agent, DocVQA and Document Rewriter. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Question Answering does, and is maintained by microsoft in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the microsoft/SkillOpt page.
How does Question Answering compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Question Answering ranks #280 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 Question Answering against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.