Skills & Subagents

Reusable prompt templates with semantic matching and specialized subagent pipelines.

Overview

TAU uses a pipeline of specialized subagents orchestrated by skills:

Default Pipeline:
┌─────────┐   ┌───────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌────────┐   ┌────────────┐   ┌──────────┐
│ Planner │ → │ Coder │ → │ Reviewer │ → │ Tester │ → │ Documenter │ → │ Verifier │
└─────────┘   └───────┘   └──────────┘   └────────┘   └────────────┘   └──────────┘
     │             │            │             │              │               │
     ▼             ▼            ▼             ▼              ▼               ▼
  Planning     Writing     Reviewing     Testing      Documentation    Verification

Subagents

TAU includes 8 specialized subagents:

Skills

Skills are reusable prompt templates that match user intents and configure the subagent pipeline.

Skill Locations

1. .tau/skills/ — Project-specific skills (highest priority)
2. ~/.tau/skills/ — User-global skills
3. Built-in skills from TAU installation

Creating a Skill

# Create skill file
mkdir -p .tau/skills/commit-message
cat > .tau/skills/commit-message/SKILL.md << 'EOF'
---
name: commit-message
description: Generate conventional commit messages from staged changes
tools: read, bash
stages: [planner, coder]
---

Analyze staged git changes and generate a conventional commit message:
type(scope): description

Types: feat, fix, docs, style, refactor, test, chore
EOF

SKILL.md Schema

Semantic Matching

Skills are matched to user prompts using embeddings:

User: "create a commit message for my changes"
   │
   ▼
TAU computes embedding for prompt
   │
   ▼
Compares against skill descriptions
   │
   ▼
Selects best match above threshold (0.7)
   │
   ▼
Applies skill: commit-message

TUI Skill Manager

Open with Ctrl+K:

CLI Commands

# List all skills
tau skill list
tau skill list --enabled
tau skill list --format json

# Enable/disable
tau skill enable commit-message
tau skill disable debug

# Search skills
tau skill search "commit"

# View details
tau skill inspect commit-message

# Usage statistics
tau skill stats
tau skill stats --days 7

# Reset usage count
tau skill reset commit-message --yes

Example Skills

Code Review

---
name: review
description: Perform comprehensive code review on changed files
tools: read, bash, grep
stages: [planner, reviewer, qa]
skip_documentation: true
---

Review code changes focusing on:
1. Code correctness and logic errors
2. Security vulnerabilities
3. Performance implications
4. Code style and readability
5. Test coverage gaps

Debug

---
name: debug
description: Debug failing tests or runtime errors
tools: read, bash, grep
model: claude-opus-4-5
stages: [planner, coder, tester, verifier]
---

Systematic debugging approach:
1. Reproduce the issue
2. Identify error source
3. Form hypothesis
4. Implement fix
5. Verify fix works

Refactor for Performance

---
name: refactor-for-performance
description: Optimize code for better performance and lower memory usage
tools: [read, write, bash, grep]
model: claude-opus-4-5
preferred_agents: [coder, reviewer]
stages: [planner, coder, reviewer, tester, verifier]
skip_documentation: true
---

You are a performance optimization expert...

Custom Pipelines

Override the default pipeline with the stages field:

# Quick fix (skip review, test, docs)
stages: [planner, coder, verifier]

# Full pipeline
stages: [planner, coder, reviewer, tester, documenter, verifier]

# Security audit
stages: [planner, reviewer, qa, verifier]

# Refactoring focus
stages: [planner, refactorer, tester, verifier]

Tool Filtering

Restrict available tools for a skill:

# Only allow specific tools
tools: read, bash

# Core tools always available:
# - askuserquestion
# - todowrite
# - enterplanmode
# - exitplanmode
# - skill
# - read