The Agent Skills format war is over — SKILL.md won. On August 12, 2026, anthropics/skills hit GitHub trending: the official Agent Skills standard, with the full spec at agentskills.io, production document skills (docx/pdf/pptx/xlsx), and a Claude Code plugin marketplace. The format is already adopted by JetBrains Junie, Google Gemini CLI, OpenCode, OpenHands, ZeroClaw, and Autohand.
This comparison ranks the official Anthropic ecosystem and the surrounding skills network — by GitHub stars, adoption, and what each layer is actually for. Star data verified live via the GitHub API on August 14, 2026.
| # | Repo / Project | ⭐ Stars | Layer | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | anthropics/skills | 169,197 | Official Skills Standard OFFICIAL | The canonical SKILL.md spec + document skills + plugin marketplace |
| 2 | anthropics/claude-code | 141,395 | Agentic Coding Tool | Terminal coding agent — the runtime that loads and executes skills |
| 3 | anthropics/claude-cookbooks | 51,498 | Official Recipes | Notebooks/recipes — effective patterns for building with Claude |
| 4 | modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol | 8,952 | Tool Connectivity Standard | MCP spec — the complementary standard for connecting tools to agents |
| 5 | virgiliojr94/book-to-skill | 21,317 | Skill Creation Pipeline | Turn any technical book PDF into a Claude Code skill |
| 6 | OpenHands/OpenHands | 83,980 | Skills Adopter (Runtime) | Open-source dev agent — early adopter of the SKILL.md standard |
| 7 | obra/superpowers | 271,873 | Community Framework | Agentic skills framework + dev methodology — the largest community layer |
| 8 | mattpocock/skills | 216,715 | Community Skills | Real engineering skills from Matt Pocock's .agents directory |
| 9 | addyosmani/agent-skills | 87,053 | Community Skills | Production-grade engineering skills for coding agents |
| 10 | google/skills | 18,102 | Ecosystem Implementation | Google's Agent Skills implementation — cross-vendor validation |
Adoption network: JetBrains Junie • Google Gemini CLI • OpenCode • OpenHands • ZeroClaw • Autohand. The format war is over — the opportunity has shifted from format to adoption tooling.
anthropics/skills (169,197⭐) is now one of the largest official repos on GitHub. It defines the SKILL.md format (frontmatter + structured instructions + assets), ships production document skills (docx/pdf/pptx/xlsx), and hosts the Claude Code plugin marketplace. The spec lives at agentskills.io — a neutral-looking home that signals "standard, not product."
✔ Canonical format, official document skills, marketplace — the gravity well
✖ Fast-moving spec; skill authors must track format changes
Claude Code (141,395⭐) is where skills execute — and it's no longer the only runtime. JetBrains Junie, Google Gemini CLI, OpenCode, OpenHands, ZeroClaw, and Autohand all adopted the format within days. A skill written once now runs on every major agent.
✔ Write once, run anywhere — unprecedented portability for agent capability
✖ Runtime feature parity varies; not every adopter supports every skill feature
Skills answer "what do you know how to do?"; MCP (8,952⭐ spec) answers "what can you connect to?". Together they form the complete agent capability layer: skills for expertise, MCP servers for tools/data access. Anthropic maintains both — the ecosystem is intentionally two-sided.
The community layers are enormous: superpowers (271,873⭐), mattpocock/skills (216,715⭐), addyosmani/agent-skills (87,053⭐), google/skills (18,102⭐), and creation pipelines like book-to-skill (21,317⭐). The economic opportunity has moved to: skill libraries, marketplaces, converters, and quality tooling.
| Use Case | Best Tool | ⭐ | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official standard + document skills | anthropics/skills | 169,197 | Canonical SKILL.md spec, official skills, marketplace |
| Running skills locally | Claude Code | 141,395 | The reference runtime with plugin support |
| Learning effective patterns | claude-cookbooks | 51,498 | Official, tested, recipe-based |
| Connecting tools/data | MCP | 8,952 | The connectivity standard complementing skills |
| Building skill libraries | superpowers / mattpocock / addyosmani | 87K–272K | Battle-tested community skill collections |
| Converting books → skills | book-to-skill | 21,317 | PDF → Claude Code skill pipeline |
Start with anthropics/skills + Claude Code. Read the spec at agentskills.io, install the official document skills, and ship your first SKILL.md this week.
Try Cursor AI IDE →Package your team's expertise as SKILL.md files and publish a library. Monitor adoption with Better Stack on your skill-serving endpoints.
Better Stack →Document skills + MCP servers = enterprise document automation. Run agent workloads on RunPod or Vast.ai GPUs.
Vast.ai GPUs →| Revenue Path | Potential | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Skills marketplace / library SaaS | HIGH | The "npm for agent skills" moment — distribution is the moat |
| IDE affiliate (Claude Code, Cursor) | HIGH | Every skill user needs a runtime |
| Observability affiliate (agent monitoring) | MEDIUM | Skill usage and agent ops need monitoring |
| GPU hosting affiliate (agent workloads) | MEDIUM | Document skills at scale need compute |
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