Agent Development

This is a learning resource for building autonomous agents in Claude Code, covering the fundamentals of agent structure and behavior design. It walks through the markdown file format with YAML frontmatter, how to write triggering conditions that fire agents automatically, and system prompt patterns that define agent behavior. Use this if you're trying to understand when to build an agent versus a command, or if you need a reference for the agent file format. The skill itself is documentation and templates rather than executable code, so think of it as onboarding material for the agent development model. It comes from a broader template repository with 27K GitHub stars.

GitHub stars: 30.2K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add davila7/claude-code-templates --skill 'Agent Development' --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Agent Development for Claude Code Plugins

Overview

Agents are autonomous subprocesses that handle complex, multi-step tasks independently. Understanding agent structure, triggering conditions, and system prompt design enables creating powerful autonomous capabilities.

Key concepts:

Agents are FOR autonomous work, commands are FOR user-initiated actions
Markdown file format with YAML frontmatter
Triggering via description field with examples
System prompt defines agent behavior
Model and color customization

Agent File Structure

Complete Format

---
name: agent-identifier
description: Use this agent when [triggering conditions]. Examples:

<example>
Context: [Situation description]
user: "[User request]"
assistant: "[How assistant should respond and use this agent]"
<commentary>
[Why this agent should be triggered]
</commentary>
</example>

<example>
[Additional example...]
</example>

model: inherit
color: blue
tools: ["Read", "Write", "Grep"]
---

You are [agent role description]...

**Your Core Responsibilities:**
1. [Responsibility 1]
2. [Responsibility 2]

**Analysis Process:**
[Step-by-step workflow]

SKILL.md on GitHub