OpenGauss Skills: Slash-Command Extensions

Skills are Markdown files stored in ~/.gauss/skills/ that extend the Gauss agent with slash commands and specialized knowledge. When a skill is active, its content is injected as a user message at the start of the conversation — not into the system prompt — so that Anthropic prompt caching is preserved across turns. Each skill can add /slash-commands, domain expertise, workflow patterns, or integration instructions that the agent treats as first-class instructions.

Skills vs Toolsets

It helps to understand where skills and toolsets differ:

	Toolsets	Skills
What they add	Python tool functions the model can call	Knowledge, slash commands, and prompt behaviors
Where they live	`toolsets.py` + `tools/*.py`	`~/.gauss/skills/*/.md`
How they activate	`--toolsets` flag or `config.yaml`	Enabled/disabled via `gauss skills` or per-platform config
Injection point	Tool schemas in the API request	User message prepended to conversation
Caching impact	Minimal — schema list is stable	Injected as user messages to preserve caching

Skills add what the agent knows and what commands it responds to. Toolsets add what functions the agent can execute.

The lean4 skill is the core workflow skill for OpenGauss. It provides all Lean 4 autoformalization commands, proof strategies, and workflow instructions. It is installed from cameronfreer/lean4-skills and is not bundled by default — install it with gauss skills install lean4.

gauss skills Subcommands

The gauss skills CLI provides a full lifecycle for discovering, installing, and managing skills.

List all installed skills — hub-installed, builtin, and local — along with their category, source, and trust level.

gauss skills list

# Filter by source type
gauss skills list --source hub
gauss skills list --source builtin
gauss skills list --source local

Output shows counts: N hub-installed, N builtin, N local.

Browse all skills available in the Skills Hub, paginated. Official skills from Nous Research are always shown first.

gauss skills browse

# Navigate pages
gauss skills browse --page 2

# Filter by source registry
gauss skills browse --source official
gauss skills browse --source skills-sh
gauss skills browse --size 40

Search across all skill registries by keyword.

gauss skills search kubernetes
gauss skills search "solana wallet" --limit 5
gauss skills search ocr --source official

Results include name, description, source, trust level, and the full identifier needed for install or inspect.

Fetch, security-scan, and install a skill. Every install runs through the Skills Guard scanner before prompting for confirmation.

gauss skills install lean4
gauss skills install official/autonomous-ai-agents/blackbox
gauss skills install owner/repo/my-skill --category productivity
gauss skills install lean4 --force   # reinstall

Short names (without /) are resolved via search. If multiple skills share the same short name, the full identifier is required.

Skills are enabled and disabled through the gauss skills config interactive TUI, which wraps the underlying config helpers in gauss_cli/skills_config.py.

gauss skills config   # opens interactive toggle UI

The TUI lets you choose a platform first (global, CLI, Telegram, Discord, etc.) and then toggle individual skills or entire categories. Changes are written to ~/.gauss/config.yaml under skills.disabled (global) or skills.platform_disabled.<platform> (per-platform).

Preview a skill’s SKILL.md content and metadata before installing.

gauss skills inspect lean4
gauss skills inspect official/autonomous-ai-agents/blackbox

Shows name, description, source, trust level, tags, and the first 50 lines of SKILL.md.

# Check hub-installed skills for upstream updates
gauss skills check
gauss skills check lean4

# Apply available updates
gauss skills update
gauss skills update lean4

# Re-run security scan on installed hub skills
gauss skills audit
gauss skills audit lean4

# Remove a hub-installed skill
gauss skills uninstall my-skill

# Publish a local skill to GitHub via PR
gauss skills publish ./my-skill --repo owner/skill-registry

# Manage custom skill sources (taps)
gauss skills tap list
gauss skills tap add owner/repo
gauss skills tap remove owner/repo

# Export/import your skill configuration
gauss skills snapshot export skills-backup.json
gauss skills snapshot import skills-backup.json

Per-Platform Skill Configuration

Different skills can be active on different platforms. The config stored in ~/.gauss/config.yaml follows this shape:

skills:
  disabled:                        # Global disabled list (applies to all platforms)
    - ascii-art
    - polymarket

  platform_disabled:               # Per-platform overrides
    telegram:
      - solana
      - agentmail
    cli: []                        # CLI uses only the global disabled list
    discord:
      - domain-intelligence

When the agent loads for a given platform, get_disabled_skills(config, platform) looks up the platform-specific list first. If no platform-specific entry exists, it falls back to the global disabled list. Supported platforms: cli, telegram, discord, slack, whatsapp, signal, email.

Conditional Skill Activation

Skills can declare required tool dependencies in their frontmatter. If those tools are not available in the current environment, the skill is hidden automatically rather than shown as broken.

---
name: solana
description: Wallet balances, token prices, and Solana chain data
requires_tools:
  - web_search
---

If web_search is not in the active toolset, the solana skill will not appear in the active skill list or inject its content.

Skill Prerequisites

A skill can also declare prerequisite skills. If the prerequisite skill is not installed or is disabled, the dependent skill is hidden.

---
name: advanced-lean4
description: Advanced Lean 4 tactics and mathlib4 patterns
requires_skills:
  - lean4
---

This prevents orphaned skills from surfacing instructions that rely on foundational knowledge defined in another skill file.

Selected Bundled Skills

OpenGauss ships with 70+ skills across 15+ categories. A selection of notable ones from the v0.2.0 release:

ascii-art

pyfiglet with 571 fonts, cowsay, and image-to-ASCII conversion. Renders text art directly in the terminal or chat.

duckduckgo-search

DuckDuckGo search integration with Firecrawl fallback for content extraction. Expanded DDGS API coverage for news, images, and videos.

domain-intel

Passive reconnaissance: subdomain enumeration, SSL certificate inspection, WHOIS lookup, and DNS record analysis.

polymarket

Read-only prediction market data from Polymarket. Query market probabilities, volumes, and outcomes.

solana

Solana blockchain data: wallet balances, USD pricing via CoinGecko, token names and metadata. Shipped as an optional skill — not activated by default.

agentmail

Agent-owned email inboxes. The agent can send, receive, and manage email through AgentMail’s API without requiring a human email account. Shipped as an optional skill — not activated by default.

More Skills by Category

Research & Knowledge

arXiv search — Search and retrieve papers from arXiv with abstract and metadata
YouTube transcripts — Fetch and summarize video transcripts
OCR / documents — Extract text from images, PDFs, and scanned documents
find-nearby — Location-based search (requires Telegram location support)

Creative & Media

ascii-video — Full ASCII video production pipeline with frame-by-frame conversion
GIF search — Search and retrieve animated GIFs via Tenor or Giphy
Excalidraw diagrams — Generate shareable Excalidraw diagram URLs from descriptions

Productivity & Integrations

Google Workspace — Interact with Docs, Sheets, and Drive
Notion — Read and write Notion pages and databases
PowerPoint (pptx) — Generate and edit .pptx presentations
Obsidian — Read and write Obsidian vault notes
OpenClaw Migration — Official migration tool from OpenClaw to Gauss

Infrastructure & MLOps

gauss-atropos-environments — RL environment development skill for Atropos training pipelines
40+ MLOps skills — Docker, Kubernetes, Modal, Daytona, and cloud deployment patterns

Smart Home & IoT

OpenHue — Control Philips Hue lights: on/off, brightness, color
Home Assistant — Interacts with Home Assistant entities via the REST API and WebSocket gateway

Gaming & Fun

Pokémon player — Interactive Pokémon gameplay skill
Minecraft — Modpack server setup and management

The /skills Slash Command

Inside the Gauss REPL, /skills provides the same functionality as the gauss skills CLI subcommands, without leaving the conversation.

/skills browse
/skills browse --source official --page 2
/skills search kubernetes
/skills install official/autonomous-ai-agents/blackbox
/skills inspect lean4
/skills list
/skills list --source hub
/skills check
/skills update lean4
/skills audit
/skills uninstall my-skill
/skills tap list
/skills tap add owner/repo
/skills snapshot export backup.json
/skills snapshot import backup.json

Type /skills help or /skills --help inside the REPL for the full command reference panel.

Creating a Custom Skill

Any Markdown file dropped into ~/.gauss/skills/ becomes an available skill. The file must include YAML frontmatter at the top.

mkdir -p ~/.gauss/skills/my-skill
cat > ~/.gauss/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md << 'EOF'
---
name: my-skill
description: Custom slash commands and workflows for my project
category: productivity
---

# My Custom Skill

This skill adds the following slash commands:

## /my-deploy
Deploy the current project to the staging environment.
Steps:
1. Run `make build` to produce the release artifact
2. Upload to the S3 bucket defined in `config/deploy.yaml`
3. Invalidate the CloudFront distribution

## /my-rollback
Roll back the last deployment by reverting to the previous artifact version.

## Conventions
- Always confirm destructive operations before executing
- Log all deployment events to `~/.gauss/deploy.log`
EOF

After creating the file, the skill appears immediately in gauss skills list under the local source type. Enable it in the TUI (gauss skills config) or use it right away — local skills are enabled by default.

Custom skill files are injected as user messages (not system prompt content) to preserve Anthropic prompt caching. The injection happens at conversation start via agent/skill_commands.py, which scans ~/.gauss/skills/ for all enabled skills on the active platform.

Skills Hub

The Skills Hub aggregates skills from multiple registries:

Registry	Trust Level	Description
`official`	★ official (bright cyan)	Optional skills maintained by Nous Research — shipped with gauss-agent but not activated by default
`skills-sh`	trusted (green)	Curated community registry
`well-known`	trusted (green)	Well-known GitHub repositories with skill collections
`github`	community (yellow)	General GitHub tap sources
`clawhub`	community (yellow)	ClawHub community registry

Every install from a non-local source passes through the Skills Guard security scanner before the confirmation prompt. Skills with a dangerous verdict cannot be installed even with --force. Use taps to add private or custom GitHub repositories as skill sources:

gauss skills tap add my-org/private-skills
gauss skills browse --source my-org/private-skills

CLI Reference

Toolsets & Skills

API & Embedding

OpenGauss Skills: Slash-Command Extensions

Skills vs Toolsets

gauss skills Subcommands

Per-Platform Skill Configuration

Conditional Skill Activation

Skill Prerequisites

Selected Bundled Skills

ascii-art

duckduckgo-search

domain-intel

polymarket

solana

agentmail

More Skills by Category

The /skills Slash Command

Creating a Custom Skill

Skills Hub

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

CLI Reference

Toolsets & Skills

API & Embedding

Documentation Index

​Skills vs Toolsets

​gauss skills Subcommands

​Per-Platform Skill Configuration

​Conditional Skill Activation

​Skill Prerequisites

​Selected Bundled Skills

ascii-art

duckduckgo-search

domain-intel

polymarket

solana

agentmail

​More Skills by Category

​The /skills Slash Command

​Creating a Custom Skill

​Skills Hub

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Skills vs Toolsets

gauss skills Subcommands

Per-Platform Skill Configuration

Conditional Skill Activation

Skill Prerequisites

Selected Bundled Skills

More Skills by Category

The /skills Slash Command

Creating a Custom Skill

Skills Hub