A skill is a directory with a SKILL.md file containing YAML frontmatter and instructions, with optional scripts, references, templates, and other resources. Deep Agents follows the Agent Skills specification.
Tool binding is documented for deepagents>=0.7.22. A skill can list space-separated tool names in metadata.include_tools; those tools remain gated until the agent reads that skill’s SKILL.md. Tools are attached through SkillsMiddleware, and a resolver can map names to tools at runtime, including per-user tools.
Pinned skills are documented for >=0.7.23: names supplied in pinned_skills cause the corresponding SKILL.md content, excluding frontmatter, to be appended as tagged messages before the next model call, and make that skill’s tools available. Reload support is documented for >=0.7.16: setting skills_metadata to None in run input or through update_state rescans skills on the next run; a changed set invalidates the prompt cache.
The documentation does not provide a release date, benchmark results, or evidence that these controls improve skill selection or task success rates.