Vercel Unveils Agent Skills for AI Coding Agents

Overview

Vercel has released agent-skills, a collection of skills that enhances AI coding agents through best practice playbooks. This project adheres to the Agent Skills specification, emphasizing performance for React and Next.js, web design review, and claimable Vercel deployments. Skills are installed similarly to npm commands and can be discovered by compatible agents during coding workflows.

Understanding Agent Skills Format

Agent Skills is an open format for packaging capabilities for AI agents. Each skill is a folder containing instructions and optional scripts, designed for compatibility across various tools.

A typical skill in vercel-labs/agent-skills includes:

• SKILL.md: Natural language instructions for skill functionality.
• scripts directory: Helper commands to inspect or modify projects.
• Optional references directory: Additional documentation or examples.

The react-best-practices skill compiles individual rule files into a single AGENTS.md, optimizing it for agent use during code reviews or refactors, thereby eliminating the need for project-specific prompt engineering.

Core Skills in vercel-labs/agent-skills

Currently, the repository offers three primary skills that streamline common frontend workflows:

1. react-best-practices
   This skill encodes structured performance guidance for React and Next.js, featuring over 40 rules grouped into 8 categories, addressing areas like network efficiency and JavaScript optimizations. Each rule includes an impact rating and practical code examples.

2. web-design-guidelines
   Focused on UI and UX quality, this skill encompasses over 100 rules covering accessibility, animation, typography, and more. It allows agents to identify common interface issues, like missing ARIA attributes.

3. vercel-deploy-claimable
   This skill connects the review loop to deployment, packaging projects as tarballs and automatically detecting frameworks. It provides both preview and claim URLs for deployed sites.

Installation and Integration

Skills can be installed via the command line, with a straightforward process highlighted in the launch announcement:

npx skills i vercel-labs/agent-skills

This command fetches the agent-skills repository as a skills package.

Additionally, Vercel offers an add-skill CLI for integrating skills into agents:

npx add-skill vercel-labs/agent-skills

This command checks the agents' configuration and installs the necessary skills.

You can also specify skill installation with commands like:

npx add-skill vercel-labs/agent-skills --skill react-best-practices -g -a claude-code -y

To list available skills:

npx add-skill vercel-labs/agent-skills --list

Post-installation, skills reside within agent-specific directories (e.g., ~/.claude/skills). Agents can utilize natural language to invoke these skills effectively.

Key Takeaways

• vercel-labs/agent-skills implements the Agent Skills specification, making capabilities consumable across AI coding agents.
• The repository includes three skills designed for performance optimization and deployment in React, UI/UX evaluation, and claimable deployments.
• Detailed rules in react-best-practices facilitate structured reviews, moving away from ad-hoc checks.
• The web-design-guidelines skill enables comprehensive UI assessments for agents.
• Skills are easily installed through command line operations, transforming best practices into reusable AI components.