{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-10-23T13:24:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-22-anthropic-donates-agent-skills-aaif/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-22-anthropic-donates-agent-skills-aaif/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-10-22-anthropic-donates-agent-skills-aaif","date":"2026-10-22","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Agent Skills donated to the Agentic AI Foundation","deck":null,"takeaway":"On Oct 22, 2026 Anthropic donated Agent Skills, its open standard for packaging agent know-how as folders with a SKILL.md file, to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation, which already hosts MCP.","category":"open-source","category_label":"Open source","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Anthropic: Donating Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation (Oct 22, 2026)","url":"https://www.anthropic.com/news/donating-agent-skills-to-the-agentic-ai-foundation","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"anthropic.com"},{"n":2,"title":"Simon Willison: Donating Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation","url":"https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/22/donating-agent-skills/","type":"discussion","group":"reactions","domain":"simonwillison.net"}],"official":1,"filed":"2026-10-23","updated":"2026-10-23","orgs":["Anthropic","Agentic AI Foundation","Linux Foundation"],"title":"Anthropic donates the Agent Skills open standard to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation: 70+ platforms, ~1M skills published, ~280M installs","summary":"On Oct 22, 2026 Anthropic donated Agent Skills, its open standard for packaging agent know-how as folders with a SKILL.md file, to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation, which already hosts MCP. The donation covers the specification, name and logo, GitHub organization and agentskills.io. Anthropic says 70+ agent platforms support the format, including ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code, with about one million skills published and nearly 280 million installed.","key_facts":["Donated: the Agent Skills standard plus its name and logo, the GitHub organization and the agentskills.io domain, to AAIF (Linux Foundation), co-founded by Anthropic, Block and OpenAI","Format: a skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file and optional scripts or reference files; Anthropic published the standard in December 2025 after developing skills for Claude Code","Adoption (Anthropic): 70+ agent platforms, including ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code; ~1 million skills published; nearly 280 million installs","Governance: maintained by engineers from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and others acting as individuals; Lead Maintainers David Soria Parra and Mahesh Murag; organizations can use or contribute without joining AAIF","Roadmap: versioned releases, a formal proposal process, and security guidance for skill authors and installers"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["agent-skills","standards","open-source","agents","linux-foundation","mcp"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nAnthropic handed its second agent standard to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation, ten months after MCP. Skills started as a\nClaude Code feature and became a de facto cross-vendor format; the donation puts its specification under neutral governance.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nWith MCP (tools) and Agent Skills (procedural know-how) both at AAIF, the two most widely adopted agent-extension formats now sit outside\nany single lab. The install numbers also show the scale of a new software-supply-chain surface, which is why the roadmap promises\nsecurity guidance for people installing skills.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2025-12-09-mcp-agentic-ai-foundation","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-12-09-mcp-agentic-ai-foundation/","date":"2025-12-09","date_precision":"day","short_title":"MCP donated to the Linux Foundation's new Agentic AI Foundation","deck":null,"takeaway":"Cemented MCP and AGENTS.md as vendor-neutral infrastructure for the agent ecosystem.","category":"agents","category_label":"Agents","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":4,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-10-11","orgs":["Anthropic","Linux Foundation","OpenAI","Block"]},{"id":"2024-11-25-model-context-protocol","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-11-25-model-context-protocol/","date":"2024-11-25","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Anthropic open-sources the Model Context Protocol (MCP)","deck":null,"takeaway":"Solved the N×M integration problem for agents and became core infrastructure of the agentic AI ecosystem.","category":"agents","category_label":"Agents","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":3,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Anthropic"]}],"people":[{"id":"simon-willison","name":"Simon Willison","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/simon-willison/"}],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-10-23","type":"filed","text":"Created (Simon Willison, Techmeme)"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-10-23","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-10-23","human_review":null,"version":null},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":175,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":114,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-4-argon","name":"Gemini 4 Argon","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":205,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":144,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}