Part of the power of agentic AI is that people share their insights, builds,
and tools with each other. The open-source ecosystem is enormous, but not
everything in it is useful for science, and the things that are useful can be
hard to find. To pool the tools that are developed by and for the Harvard
research community, we set up a shared Skills repository on GitHub.
Anyone at Harvard can contribute, and anything you build there is immediately
available to every researcher who installs it.
Each skill in the repo has two files: an agent file that Claude
reads (the instructions for what to do), and a description
that you read (what the skill does and how to use it). Drop the agent file
into your project's .claude/agents/ folder in VS Code and it
works every time you ask Claude to use it.
Say you want to use the paper-reviewer skill. Open its folder in
the repo and read the description.md to see what it does and what
options it has. Then ask Claude to download the agent file for you.
Prompt: download a skill
Go to https://github.com/Harvard-Agentic-Science/Skills and download the paper-reviewer skill. Save it to .claude/agents/paper-reviewer.md in my project.
Once the agent file is saved to .claude/agents/, you can use it
any time by saying "run the paper-reviewer agent." It already knows what to
do.
Sharing a skill you built
If you have built a skill that works well for you, your peers would likely
benefit too. Maybe you wrote an agent that screens papers for a specific
methodology, or one that formats data tables for a particular journal. Sharing
it means others don't have to build the same thing from scratch.
Each skill you contribute needs two files: the agent file (the
.md file with frontmatter and instructions that Claude reads)
and a description.md (a human-readable explanation of what the
skill does, for people browsing the repo). Templates for both are in the template/ folder.
The skills repo is on GitHub. You do not need to know git commands to
contribute. Claude can handle the entire process. Here is how it works, assuming
you already have a skill file called customskill.md that you want
to share.
1. Get a copy of the repo
Ask Claude to fork the Skills repository to your GitHub account and clone it
to your machine. This gives you your own copy to work with.
Prompt: clone the repo
Fork and clone the Harvard Agentic Science Skills repo to my machine. The repo is at https://github.com/Harvard-Agentic-Science/Skills. Fork it to my GitHub account first, then clone my fork locally.
2. Add your skill
Tell Claude to add your skill to the repo. It will create a folder under skills/, format your agent file to match the template, and write
a description.md based on what the skill does.
Prompt: add your skill
Create a new skill in the Skills repo based on customskill.md. Make a folder under skills/ with a short lowercase name using hyphens. Inside it, add the agent .md file (use template/skill-template.md for the format) and a description.md (use template/description-template.md for the format). The description should explain what the skill does in plain language.
3. Submit it
Claude pushes your skill and opens a pull request. A maintainer reviews it,
and once it is approved, your skill shows up in the repo for anyone to use.
Prompt: submit a PR
Create a new branch for my skill, commit the new skill file, push the branch, and open a pull request to the main branch of Harvard-Agentic-Science/Skills. Use a clear PR title that says what the skill does.