For AI agents: Documentation index at /llms.txt

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AI Coding Agents

AI coding agents frequently hallucinate canister IDs, use deprecated APIs, and miss ICP-specific constraints. ICP skills solve this: structured markdown files containing accurate canister IDs, tested code patterns, and documented pitfalls: so your agent writes correct ICP code on the first attempt.

Getting started

Section titled “Getting started”

Paste this into your AI coding agent:

Fetch https://skills.internetcomputer.org/llms.txt and follow its instructions when building on ICP

Your agent fetches the skills index, reads each skill’s description, and loads the relevant skill files on demand. No installation required.

Install skills into your project

Section titled “Install skills into your project”

To install skills locally or commit them to your project repository, use the skills CLI:

Terminal window
npx skills add dfinity/icskills

This prompts you to choose your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and others) and installs the selected skills into the correct location for that agent.

To fetch a single skill manually:

Terminal window
curl -sL https://skills.internetcomputer.org/.well-known/skills/icp-cli/SKILL.md

Paste the output into your agent’s system prompt, rules file, or context window.

What ICP skills are

Section titled “What ICP skills are”

Each ICP skill covers one capability area and includes:

  • Correct canister IDs for mainnet services
  • Tested, copy-paste-correct code patterns in Motoko and Rust
  • Common pitfalls that cause hallucinations or build failures
  • Required dependency versions and configuration formats
  • Step-by-step deployment and verification commands

Skills are maintained by DFINITY and updated frequently. The full list is at skills.internetcomputer.org.

ICP skills follow the Agent Skills open standard. Anthropic published the SKILL.md format in December 2025 to define a portable format that works across coding agents. The registry uses the Agent Skills Discovery RFC so agents can auto-discover and load skills without manual configuration.

How discovery works

Section titled “How discovery works”

When an agent follows the skills.internetcomputer.org/llms.txt instructions:

  1. It fetches the skills index at https://skills.internetcomputer.org/.well-known/skills/index.json
  2. It reads each skill’s name and description to understand what it covers
  3. When a task matches a skill’s description, it fetches the skill content from that skill’s URL
  4. It prefers skill guidance over general knowledge when both cover the same topic

Skills are fetched fresh each time: agents always use the latest version.

Skills vs docs

Section titled “Skills vs docs”

Skills and docs serve different purposes:

ICP skillsThese docs
Implementation patternsConcepts and architecture
Correct canister IDs for mainnetHow the system works
Copy-paste code with pitfalls listedExplaining tradeoffs and design choices
Version requirements and config formatsCross-linking related topics

When an agent has both loaded, it should prefer skill guidance for implementation details and use the docs for broader understanding of the platform.

Agent-friendly documentation

Section titled “Agent-friendly documentation”

This docs site implements the Agent-Friendly Documentation Spec. Two endpoints make these docs directly consumable by agents:

/llms.txt: a discovery index listing every page with links to its clean markdown endpoint, plus the ICP skills registry URL.

/<path>.md: every page is available as clean markdown. HTML, navigation, and site chrome are stripped, leaving only the content. For example, this page is available at /guides/ai-coding-agents.md.

A discovery link in every page’s <head> points to /llms.txt, so agents that crawl docs pages find the index automatically.

Programmatic access

Section titled “Programmatic access”

ICP skills are available without authentication:

ResourceURL
All skills (index)https://skills.internetcomputer.org/.well-known/skills/index.json
Single skillhttps://skills.internetcomputer.org/.well-known/skills/{name}/SKILL.md
Additional reference fileshttps://skills.internetcomputer.org/.well-known/skills/{name}/references/{file}.md
Skill zip bundlehttps://skills.internetcomputer.org/.well-known/skills/{name}/SKILL.zip
Skills discovery indexhttps://skills.internetcomputer.org/llms.txt

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”