SkCC: Portable and Secure Skill Compilation for Cross-Framework LLM Agents
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution
Abstract (arXiv)
LLM agents increasingly rely on reusable skills (e.g., SKILL markdown files) to execute complex tasks, yet these artifacts lack portability: agent frameworks are highly sensitive to prompt formatting, leading to a large performance variation for the same skill. Nevertheless, most skills are authored once as format-agnostic Markdown, necessitating costly per-framework rewrites and also leaving security largely unaddressed, with widespread vulnerabilities in practice. To address this, we present SkCC, a compiler for LLM agents that introduces classical compilation design into agent skill development. SkCC centers on SkIR, a strongly-typed intermediate representation that decouples skill semantics from framework-specific formatting, thus enabling portable deployment across agent frameworks. Atop of this IR, a static Optimizer enforces security constraints, blocking vulnerabilities before deployment. Implemented as a four-phase pipeline, SkCC effectively reduces adaptation complexity from O(m × n) to O(m + n) across m skills and n frameworks. Experiments on SkillsBench demonstrate that SkCC delivers consistent and substantial gains over original counterparts, with pass rate increases from 21.1% to 33.3% on Claude Code and from 35.1% to 48.7% on Kimi CLI. Further, the design achieves sub-10ms compilation latency, 94.8% proactive security trigger rate, and 10-46% runtime token savings across frameworks.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 15 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 May 2026.
Builds on
15 of 48 references.
Closest ancestors · 3
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Skill Retrieval Augmentation for Agentic AI27 Apr
- 2026How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settings6 Apr
- 2026SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks13 Feb
Other references · 12
- 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,049
- 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
- 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
- 2024From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarizationcited by 1,411
- 2023An LLM Compiler for Parallel Function Callingcited by 170
- 2024Does Prompt Formatting Have Any Impact on LLM Performance?cited by 132
- 2024ToolGen: Unified Tool Retrieval and Calling via Generationcited by 72
- 2020The Deep Learning Compiler: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 46
- 2025The OpenHands Software Agent SDK: A Composable and Extensible Foundation for Production Agentscited by 39
- 2025Beyond Prompt Content: Enhancing LLM Performance via Content-Format Integrated Prompt Optimizationcited by 15
- 2026Agentic Code Optimization via Compiler-LLM Cooperationcited by 3
- 2026SecPI: Secure Code Generation with Reasoning Models via Security Reasoning Internalizationcited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolutioncited by 18
- 2026Harnessing Agent Skills: Architectural Patterns and a Reference Architecture for Skill-Mediated LLM Agentscited by 1
- 2026From Cognitive Architectures to Language Agents: A Mechanism-Level Review of Lineage, Convergence, and Migration Gapscited by 1
- 2026SkillEffect: Checked Lowering for Memory-Bounded Agent Toolscited by 0
- 2026Natural-Language Workflows Are Not Software Yet: Artifact-Driven Compilation for Reliable Agent Executioncited by 0
- 2026SkillSpec: Intent-Masked Specification Reasoning for Agent Skill Correctnesscited by 0
- 2026Can Agents Trust Their Skills? Uncovering Unsafe Chains of Trust in Skill-Based LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026Can Agents Trust Their Skills? Uncovering Unsafe Chains of Trust in Skill-Based LLM Agents30 Sep 2026
- 2026SkillSpec: Intent-Masked Specification Reasoning for Agent Skill Correctness5 Sep 2026
- 2026Natural-Language Workflows Are Not Software Yet: Artifact-Driven Compilation for Reliable Agent Execution21 Aug 2026
- 2026SkillEffect: Checked Lowering for Memory-Bounded Agent Tools17 Aug 2026
- 2026From Cognitive Architectures to Language Agents: A Mechanism-Level Review of Lineage, Convergence, and Migration Gaps27 Jul 2026
- 2026Harnessing Agent Skills: Architectural Patterns and a Reference Architecture for Skill-Mediated LLM Agents29 May 2026
- 2026SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolution18 May 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026SkVM: Revisiting Language VM for Skills across Heterogenous LLMs and Harnesses
- 2026GraSP: Graph-Structured Skill Compositions for LLM Agents
- 2026SkillRevise: Improving LLM-Authored Agent Skills via Trace-Conditioned Skill Revision
- 2026SkillRouter: Skill Routing for LLM Agents at Scale
- 2026Agent Skill Security: Threat Models, Attacks, Defenses, and Evaluation
- 2026SoK: Agentic Skills -- Beyond Tool Use in LLM Agents
- 2026Skill-as-Pseudocode: Refactoring Skill Libraries to Pseudocode for LLM Agents
- 2026Black-Box Skill Stealing Attack from Proprietary LLM Agents: An Empirical Study