Agent Skills (SKILL.md) in every AI coding agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cline, Amp and OpenHands (2026)

• Claude Code: .claude/skills/NAME/SKILL.md (project) and ~/.claude/skills/NAME/SKILL.md (personal). Plugins ship skills too, invoked as /plugin-name:skill-name.
• OpenAI Codex: .agents/skills in the folder where you launch Codex, its parent folders up to the repo root, ~/.agents/skills, /etc/codex/skills (admin) and bundled system skills.
• Cline: .cline/skills/ (recommended), .clinerules/skills/ or .claude/skills/ in the project, and ~/.cline/skills/ globally.
• Amp: .agents/skills/ and .claude/skills/ in the project and parent folders, ~/.config/agents/skills/, ~/.agents/skills/, ~/.config/amp/skills/, ~/.claude/skills/ and folders listed in amp.skills.path.
• OpenHands: .agents/skills/NAME/SKILL.md in the repo (legacy .openhands/skills and .openhands/microagents still work) and ~/.agents/skills for the user.

All five agents accept the same minimal file: YAML frontmatter with name and description, then Markdown instructions. Keep the name equal to the folder name, because Cline and OpenHands require it to match.

---
name: release-notes
description: Draft release notes from recent commits. Use when the user asks for release notes or a changelog.
---

1. Read the commits since the last tag.
2. Group changes into Features, Fixes and Other.
3. Write the notes in plain Markdown.

• Put it in .agents/skills/release-notes/ for Codex, Amp and OpenHands.
• Put the same folder in .claude/skills/ for Claude Code. Cline and Amp read that folder too.
• Write the description as a trigger: what the skill does and when to use it. Claude Code, Codex, Cline and Amp decide whether to load a skill from that text.

• Claude Code: type /skill-name, or let Claude load it when your request matches the description. Text after the name fills $ARGUMENTS.
• Codex: run /skills or type $ and the skill name, or let Codex pick it from the description.
• Cline: type / and pick the skill, or let Cline load it when your request matches.
• Amp: the model sees each skill's name and description and loads the full SKILL.md when the skill is invoked. Install skills with amp skill add <source>.
• OpenHands: add a triggers list to the frontmatter to load a skill only when one of those keywords appears in a message.

• Claude Code: disable-model-invocation: true in the frontmatter. Only you can then run it.
• Codex: policy.allow_implicit_invocation: false in agents/openai.yaml. Explicit $skill calls still work. To disable a skill fully, add a [[skills.config]] entry with enabled = false to ~/.codex/config.toml.
• Cline: switch the skill off in the Skills tab of the menu with the scale icon below the chat.
• Amp: set amp.skills.disableClaudeCodeSkills to skip the Claude-compatible folders.
• OpenHands: use a triggers list so the skill loads only on matching keywords.

• Claude Code: enterprise beats personal, and personal beats project. A skill beats a .claude/commands/ file with the same name.
• Codex: skills with the same name are not merged; both appear in the selector.
• Cline: a global skill beats a project skill with the same name.
• Amp: the first skill found in its search order wins.

• Codex caps the initial skills list at 2% of the context window (8,000 characters if the size is unknown) and shortens descriptions first when you have many skills.
• Cline suggests keeping SKILL.md under 5k tokens; each skill's metadata costs about 100 tokens at startup.
• Amp does not reload skills in a running thread when you run amp skills list elsewhere. Ask Amp to reload your skills.
• Claude Code merged custom commands into skills, so .claude/commands/*.md files still create /name commands.

• Claude Code skills and slash commands (SKILL.md)
• Codex skills: SKILL.md, folders and $skill
• Cline skills: location, format and slash commands
• Amp skills: folders, amp skill add and search order
• OpenHands skills, AGENTS.md and setup.sh
• Compare: rules and instruction files in every AI coding agent
• Compare: hooks in every AI coding agent
• Browse vendor-published Agent Skills