General Skills

General guidelines for OpenHands to work more effectively with the repository.

Usage

These skills are always loaded as part of the context.

Frontmatter Syntax

The frontmatter for this type of skill is optional.

Frontmatter should be enclosed in triple dashes (---) and may include the following fields:

Field	Description	Required	Default
agent	The agent this skill applies to	No	’CodeActAgent’

Creating a Repository Agent

To create an effective repository agent, you can ask OpenHands to analyze your repository with a prompt like:

Please browse the repository, look at the documentation and relevant code, and understand the purpose of this repository.

Specifically, I want you to create an `AGENTS.md` file at the repository root. This file should contain succinct information that summarizes:
1. The purpose of this repository
2. The general setup of this repo
3. A brief description of the structure of this repo

Read all the GitHub workflows under .github/ of the repository (if this folder exists) to understand the CI checks (e.g., linter, pre-commit), and include those in the `AGENTS.md` file.

This approach helps OpenHands capture repository context efficiently, reducing the need for repeated searches during conversations and ensuring more accurate solutions.

Example Content

An AGENTS.md file should include:

# Repository Purpose
This project is a TODO application that allows users to track TODO items.

# Setup Instructions
To set it up, you can run `npm run build`.

# Repository Structure
- `/src`: Core application code
- `/tests`: Test suite
- `/docs`: Documentation
- `/.github`: CI/CD workflows

# CI/CD Workflows
- `lint.yml`: Runs ESLint on all JavaScript files
- `test.yml`: Runs the test suite on pull requests

# Development Guidelines
Always make sure the tests are passing before committing changes. You can run the tests by running `npm run test`.

See more examples of general skills at OpenHands Skills registry.