Skills

Skills load from three sources, in addition to each other:

~/.hooman/skills          # user-installed (global)
<cwd>/.hooman/skills      # project-local, when the folder exists

plus bundled built-in skills shipped with Hooman.

At runtime, Hooman uses the Strands AgentSkills plugin to load:

• bundled built-in skills (e.g. hooman-coding, hooman-design, hooman-config, hooman-mcp, hooman-channels, hooman-skills)
• user-installed skills under ~/.hooman/skills
• project-local skills under <cwd>/.hooman/skills when that directory exists

Each skills folder is treated as a parent directory of skill subdirectories, where every skill lives in its own folder containing a SKILL.md.

When a session starts, the plugin injects available skill metadata into the system prompt and exposes the skills tool so the model can activate a skill and load its full instructions on demand.

Project-local skills

Drop a skill under the working directory’s .hooman/skills/ to share it with anyone who runs Hooman in that project — no install into the home catalog required. Project-local skills sit alongside the global catalog and built-ins; they are not managed by the /config install/remove flow (that targets ~/.hooman/skills).

Managing skills

The /config workflow (and the VS Code Skills panel) can:

• search the public skills catalog
• install a skill from a source string, repo, URL, or local path into ~/.hooman/skills
• refresh installed skills
• remove installed skills with confirmation

Bundled prompt harness

Independent of skills, Hooman ships toggleable harness prompt sections (prompts.behaviour, prompts.communication, prompts.execution, prompts.guardrails in config.json). Coding-specific guidance ships as the built-in hooman-coding skill rather than a hardcoded prompt section, so it can be updated or disabled like any other skill.