Skills

Skills are markdown files that inject context, instructions, and workflows into your AI session when triggered by keywords. They're the primary way AIDE extends your assistant's capabilities.

How Skills Work

When you type a message, AIDE's skill matcher scans it against all known skill triggers. If a match is found, the skill's markdown content is injected into the conversation, giving the AI detailed instructions for a specific workflow.

You: "write tests for the auth module"
     ↓
     AIDE matches "write tests" → test skill
     ↓
     Injects test skill instructions into context
     ↓
     AI follows structured TDD workflow

Fuzzy Matching

Trigger matching uses Levenshtein distance for typo tolerance. You don't need to type triggers exactly:

• "write tsets for auth" still matches the test skill
• "debug ths issue" still matches the debug skill

Skill Categories

Skills fall into several categories:

Category	Skills	Purpose
Planning	plan-swarm, decide, design	Decompose work, make decisions, create specs
Development	test, implement, build-fix	TDD, implementation, fixing build issues
Quality	verify, review, patterns, assess-findings	QA, code review, static analysis
Operations	swarm, ralph, debug, perf	Parallel execution, persistence, debugging
Knowledge	memorise, recall, forget	Memory management
Code	code-search, git, worktree-resolve	Code navigation, git operations
Docs	docs	Documentation updates

Discovery Order

Skills are discovered from multiple locations. Higher priority sources override lower ones:

1. Project-local .aide/skills/ — Project-specific overrides
2. Project-local skills/ — Alternative project location
3. Plugin-bundled skills/ — Ships with AIDE
4. Global ~/.aide/skills/ — User-wide custom skills

This means you can override any built-in skill by creating a file with the same name in your project's .aide/skills/ directory.

Hot Reloading

Skills are automatically reloaded when files change. Edit a skill file and it takes effect immediately — no restart needed.

Next Steps

• Built-in Skills — Full reference of all 22 built-in skills
• Custom Skills — Create your own project-specific skills