Skills — reusable playbooks for AI agents
A skill is a step-by-step playbook an AI agent can follow end-to-end. Where the MCP tools are the individual actions an agent can take, a skill is the plan that strings them together for a whole job — for example, importing an existing website into StaticOwl as a self-hosted, structured, editable site.
Skills are maintained by StaticOwl and ship as part of the product. They're the same for every site, and they're read-only: the dashboard, the API, and the MCP tools all show the same catalog — none of them creates or edits a skill. There's no per-site authoring step.
Where skills show up
| Surface | What you get |
|---|---|
| Dashboard → Skills | Browse the catalog, open a skill to read it, and copy the full playbook. |
MCP (skills_list, skills_get) |
An agent discovers and loads a skill while it works. |
Public API (/api/skills) |
The same catalog over HTTP — no authentication needed. |
Use a skill with an AI assistant
The point of a skill is to hand an agent a working plan. With the StaticOwl MCP connected, an agent:
- Calls
skills_listto discover what playbooks are available. - Calls
skills_getwith a skill's name to load its full instructions. - Follows the playbook, using the other MCP tools to do the work.
If you're driving the agent yourself, you can also open a skill in the dashboard,
Copy playbook, and paste it into a chat with the StaticOwl MCP connected. Or,
for Claude Code, drop the skills/<name> folder into .claude/skills/ and invoke
it as /<name>.
See Connect your AI assistant for how to connect the MCP.
What's in the catalog
Today the catalog includes:
- site-import — import an existing website (WordPress/Elementor, WooCommerce, Framer, Webflow, or any live URL) into StaticOwl as a self-hosted site with structured, editable content types, working forms, on-site search, cookie consent, redirects, and a real QA audit. It respects existing structured data (such as WooCommerce products) rather than only scraping HTML.
The list grows over time; call skills_list or check the dashboard for the
current set.
API and MCP reference
Both surfaces are read-only.
| Route | MCP tool | Returns |
|---|---|---|
GET /api/skills |
skills_list |
A summary of each skill: name, title, description, updatedAt. |
GET /api/skills/{name} |
skills_get |
One skill, including its full Markdown playbook. |
The /api/skills routes are public — no API key required — because a skill is
documentation meant to be discovered and shared.
See also
- Connect your AI assistant — connect Claude or another MCP client to your site.
- AI features — the other agent-facing capabilities in StaticOwl.
- Transforms — run your own JavaScript when a playbook needs a step the tools don't cover.