Skill categories
Reference documentation for Skill categories in Adaptive Skills.
Adaptive Skills tags every published skill with a metadata.category value in the SKILL.md frontmatter. Categories are attributes, not directory structure — the on-disk layout is flat (skills/<name>/SKILL.md) to conform with the agentskills.io Skill Collection layout consumed by APM. See ADR-005 for the rationale behind the flatten.
This document is the canonical narrative for each category and tracks its backlog. The machine-readable mapping is in projections/registry.json under each skill’s category field.
Category growth is governed by Skill Catalog Governance: backlog entries are candidates, not authorization to create skills. New categories or category moves should pass the Skill Quality Gate when they change skill boundaries.
business
Business-domain skills for strategic framing, value logic, and operating-model thinking.
- Published:
business-design,revenue-lever-mapping - Backlog:
stakeholder-mapping,value-proposition,operating-model
cross-functional
Skills for decisions that cross product, design, engineering, or business boundaries.
- Published:
triad-check - Backlog:
alignment-brief,escalation-review
design
Design-domain skills for experience framing, UX critique, content clarity, and bounded design-system review. These are portable design skills, not UI implementation kits.
- Published:
ux-strategy,ux-provocation,heuristic-audit,ux-writing,design-system-intelligence,experience-design - Backlog:
ux-research-synthesis,ux-ui-review
docs
Documentation skills for designing self-service reader journeys, creating source-backed onboarding, manuals, guides, and reference content, and validating procedural clarity, recovery paths, and publication quality across reader levels.
- Published:
documentation - Backlog: —
efficiency
Skills that compound execution speed without sacrificing clarity — task chunking, handoff hygiene, mid-flight checkpoints.
- Published:
task-chunking,handoff-summary,checkpoint-review,work-continuity-efficiency - Backlog: see
docs/efficiency-layer-candidate-skills.md
engineering
Reusable execution skills for engineering work. These skills should work across products without inheriting local operating rules.
- Published:
workflow,feature-planning,testing,debugging,api-design,refactoring,lean-implementation,architecture-review,code-style,communication,domain-language-alignment - Backlog: v0 already covers the core set; new entries flow through the Evolution Layer.
governance
Skills for reviewing permanent cost, lifecycle decisions, and governed knowledge use without taking project-level decision authority.
- Published:
feature-complexity-audit,sunset-decision,knowledge-source-evaluation,knowledge-conflict-resolution,restricted-context-check,knowledge-governance - Backlog:
decision-log,handoff-governance,ai-safety-review
metrics
Metrics-domain skills for observable systems, decision-oriented telemetry, and operational signals.
- Published:
observability-review - Backlog:
metric-design,instrumentation-thinking
planning
Skills for structuring, stress-testing, and de-risking plans before execution begins.
- Published:
premortem,intent-clarification - Backlog: —
product
Product-domain skills for framing product decisions and checking whether opportunities and feature investments are connected to user, business, and outcome evidence.
- Published:
product-management,feature-value-governance,opportunity-tree-alignment - Backlog: Additional Product Management modules; extraction into a new skill requires independent routing, use, verification, and reuse evidence.
quality
Quality-domain skills for readiness, consistency, and reliability review.
- Published:
qa-review - Backlog:
release-readiness,risk-assessment