Find the skill files

Built-in skills are stored under skills/ in the repository. Each has a directory containing SKILL.md and, where needed, a reference/ folder or a test-plan.md.

Read before using

Look through the instructions and supporting files before you rely on a skill. Reference content is included in the AI request, so it can affect the answer and what information reaches a provider.

Record the version you used

Keep the skill revision with your test results. An author name or version label describes the file; it does not show that someone independently reviewed it.

Personal skills

A skill saved for your own use is a database record, not a change to the repository. Your version can take the place of a built-in with the same name in your own chats; other users keep their own version or the built-in. This is a useful starting point for adapting a task without publishing it.

Details

Save it through the Skill Creator or the skill wizard inside the running application; it lands as a row in the user_skills database table, scoped to you (ADR 0012). It shadows a built-in of the same name in your own chats only — if you fork the shipped NDA Review skill and tweak its severity calibration, your version renders for you; everyone else, including the skill’s original author, keeps seeing the built-in. Nothing here touches this repository or requires a PR.

Team skills

The API also supports team-owned skills, with team-admin checks for creating and changing them. These remain database records and belong in the database backup. The older design record deferred this feature, but the reviewed code includes it; do not rely on that old “deferred” label.

Details

The same wizard supports a team-scoped skill, visible to everyone on that team rather than to you alone — a team-admin action, gated in api/app/api/user_skills.py. ADR 0012 deferred team scope to a follow-on task (D8.1); the shipped code implements it — a teams table (api/alembic/versions/0014_create_teams.py) and owner_team_id on user_skills — and no later ADR records the extension, so ADR 0012’s “deferred” text is stale against the running code as of the checked commit. Still a database row, still no repository change — this is the right home for a skill your organization standardized on internally but has no reason to publish.

Publishing a skill

The curated built-ins live in this repository’s skills/ directory. The contribution policy routes community work-product skills to LegalQuants/lq-skills. Claim a task before starting and check that repository’s contribution and license terms. Publishing a skill is separate from saving or sharing it inside your installation.

For most skill contributions — a new jurisdiction’s calibration for an existing review skill, or a new domain skill entirely — that’s this route. Per README.md §“Starter skills”, this repository’s skills/ holds the fifteen first-party built-in skills — the ten M1 starter skills plus case-law-research and four table-mode/internal skills (contract-snapshot, msa-snapshot, nda-snapshot, playbook-easy-extract). The community repository is where jurisdiction- and practice-area-specific contributions accumulate, under review norms that mirror skills/CONTRIBUTING.md’s bar (practicing-attorney attestation, peer review), but live in that repository, not this one.

Details

ADR 0024 settled the routing after several contributions stalled on exactly this question. An incoming jurisdiction or practice-area contribution is classified into one of four shapes:

1. Skills (S2) go to legalquants/lq-skills. Community work-product skills route to the community skills repo; this repository’s skills/ directory holds the curated first-party set.
2. Authority sources (S1) go to this repository as sources under ADR 0021, with the security review gateway-egress changes already carry.
3. Corpora / statutory graphs (S3) go to org-level repos per the PRD §9 DE-264 pattern; anything S3 that reaches operators is gated in this repository as an S1-class change.
4. Practice areas excluded by PRD §1.6 (S4) require a mini-PRD and a committee-decided PRD amendment first; the proposal’s S1/S2/S3 parts route normally once the amendment lands. Litigation is chief among the practice areas PRD §1.6 excludes today.

ADR 0024 also commits to a standing ledger at docs/contribute/coverage-map.md, checked before a contribution is routed and updated in the same sweep. That file is not present in the repository as of the checked commit. Until it exists, claim your contribution on a tracking issue first (skills/CONTRIBUTING.md), same as any skill contribution, so two contributors don’t duplicate the same jurisdiction or practice area.

If the contribution adds more than instructions

A new outside research source changes the application’s network access and needs the security review gateway-egress changes already carry (ADR 0021; CODEOWNERS routes gateway/** changes to security review), with the adversarial read in docs/security/external-contribution-vetting.md for authors outside the known-contributor circle. A dataset may need a separate repository. A proposal outside the stated product scope needs a scope decision before implementation. ADR 0024 describes these routes (in detail above); ask a maintainer to classify a mixed proposal.

Next

• What counts as a reviewed skill?