Extend Pi Agent with reviewed Skills

What is a Skill, and why install one?

A general model does not know your household procedure. A Skill is a repeatable operating procedure: it tells the agent when a situation applies and which steps to follow. Treat third-party Skill content as untrusted instruction and review it before installation.

• Install a third-party Skill: Add a documented procedure for tasks such as document processing, presentations, research, or design. Availability does not establish quality or safety.
• Write your own later: Package a household procedure—such as a weekly report or refrigerator inventory—as a Skill. See Chapter 16.

Chapter 14 explains discovery, system-prompt metadata, and how the agent decides when to load a Skill. This handbook focuses on selecting and installing Skills.

Install a Skill: the 3-minute version

See Chapter 15 for the full walkthrough. Here is the quick version:

1. Open the Skills panel in pi-web

   In the Home Assistant sidebar, open the Pi Agent workspace, then select the Skills panel.

2. Paste the package spec and select Install

   Each entry includes a package spec that you can paste directly. Supported forms are shown below:

   # GitHub repo(most common)
   git:github.com/anthropics/skills
   # pin a version (tag or commit, recommended for production)
   git:github.com/anthropics/[email protected]
   # npm package
   npm:@scope/some-skill
   # Local path (self-written skill)
   /data/pi-agent/skills/my-skill

3. Reload the Session and verify discovery

   After installation, select Reload session—or start a new Session—and ask, “Which Skills are currently loaded?” Confirm that the expected Skill appears.

4. Test with a matching request

   Make a request that matches the Skill’s description, then inspect the response and any proposed tool use.

Ten selected Skills for household use

These examples are ordered by their direct relevance to household workflows. Inclusion is not an endorsement; inspect the current source before installation.

Eight popular collections

Use these repositories as starting points for review. Installing a whole collection increases context use and the amount of third-party content you must audit.

git:github.com/anthropics/skills

git:github.com/obra/superpowers

git:github.com/mattpocock/skills

git:github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills

git:github.com/tonylofgren/aurora-smart-home

git:github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills

# use as a catalog; do not install the entire collection
https://github.com/ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skills

# index only; follow each link to install the original repository
https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-agent-skills

Other references recorded at the snapshot date: calesthio/OpenMontage for video production (approximately 49,000 stars, AGPL, and dependencies that may not run in the add-on container), K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills for research, and mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills for security work.

Compatibility notes

The SKILL.md format is used by tools including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, OpenCode, and Pi. Plain-Markdown instructions are broadly portable, but compatibility can be reduced in these cases:

• Claude Code-specific mechanisms: Hooks, plugin commands, or agent orchestration may not behave the same way in Pi. The written instructions may still be readable, but automated behavior can be incomplete.
• A specific MCP server or SaaS account: The Skill cannot complete that part of its work until the dependency is configured. Review credentials, data handling, and costs first.
• scripts/ and a missing runtime: Scripts may require Python packages, Node.js, native binaries, or other dependencies that are unavailable in the Woow HA Pi Agent container. Plain-Markdown Skills are the most portable.

Security checklist

• Read before installing: Open SKILL.md and inspect it yourself. You can also ask Pi Agent to summarize the files, dependencies, tool use, and risks, but do not substitute that summary for your own review.
• Test anything that can change Home Assistant: Evaluate entries such as home-assistant-manager in a separate test instance with least-privilege access.
• Pin production installations: Use @tag or @commit so upstream changes are not pulled in without an explicit upgrade.
• Popularity is not safety: Review requested permissions, scripts, network destinations, licenses, and maintainers even for widely starred repositories.

SKILL.md quick reference

The smallest Skill structure is shown below. See Chapter 16 to write your own.

fridge-check/
└── SKILL.md          <- only required file

# SKILL.md contents
---
name: fridge-check
description: When the user shares a refrigerator photo, list visible ingredients, identify items to inspect or use soon, and suggest dinner ideas.
  Also use it when the user asks “What should I cook today?” or “What is in the refrigerator?”
---

# Fridge inventory
(Clear instructions for the agent, written as if onboarding a new colleague. Reply in English.)

Keep SKILL.md concise. Put supporting material in references/, scripts/, and assets/, then load it only when needed to limit context use.

FAQ

Download this handbook

This handbook is a self-contained HTML file that works offline. Collection details become outdated, so return to the online version through the Resource Hub before making an important decision.

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