Tool: Load a skill

Load a skill's specialized instructions and list its bundled resources.

Skills are modular capabilities that extend Claude's functionality with specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools. Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file with instructions and optional bundled resources (scripts, references, assets).

When btw_tool_skill is included in the chat client's tools, btw automatically injects information about available skills into the system prompt so the model knows which skills are available. If the skill tool is added after client creation, the model can call btw_tool_skill("") (empty name) to get the current skill listing.

Skills are discovered from the following locations, in increasing order of priority (later sources override earlier ones when skill names conflict):

1. Skills bundled with the btw package itself

2. Skills from currently attached R packages — any package with an inst/skills/ directory that is loaded via library() or require()

3. User-level skills (~/.btw/skills, ~/.config/btw/skills, tools::R_user_dir("btw")/skills). For backwards compatibility, the legacy tools::R_user_dir("btw", "config")/skills path used by briefly by btw 1.2.0 is also included at lower priority.

4. Project-level skills (.btw/skills/ or .agents/skills/)

Usage

btw_tool_skill(name, `_intent` = "")

Arguments

name

The name of the skill to load, or "" to list all available skills.

_intent

An optional string describing the intent of the tool use. When the tool is used by an LLM, the model will use this argument to explain why it called the tool.

Value

A btw_tool_result containing the skill instructions and a listing of bundled resources with their paths.

See also

Other skills: btw_skill_install_github(), btw_skill_install_package()