# Harnessing Agent Skills: Architectural Patterns and a Reference Architecture for Skill-Mediated LLM Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20631 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20631/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 34 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent skill learning and evolution](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-skill-learning-and-evolution/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16291/) (2023)
- [OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16741/) (2024)
- [SkillsBench: Benchmarking How Well Agent Skills Work Across Diverse Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12670/) (2026)
- [SkillWeaver: Web Agents can Self-Improve by Discovering and Honing Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07079/) (2025)
- [Trace2Skill: Distill Trajectory-Local Lessons into Transferable Agent Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25158/) (2026)
- [Agentic Harness Engineering: Observability-Driven Automatic Evolution of Coding-Agent Harnesses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25850/) (2026)
- [CoEvoSkills: Self-Evolving Agent Skills via Co-Evolutionary Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01687/) (2026)
- [Inducing Programmatic Skills for Agentic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06821/) (2025)
- [EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02766/) (2026)
- [Skill-Inject: Measuring Agent Vulnerability to Skill File Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20156/) (2026)
- [Externalization in LLM Agents: A Unified Review of Memory, Skills, Protocols and Harness Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08224/) (2026)
- [Organizing, Orchestrating, and Benchmarking Agent Skills at Ecosystem Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02176/) (2026)
- [How Well Do Agentic Skills Work in the Wild: Benchmarking LLM Skill Usage in Realistic Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04323/) (2026)
- [Natural-Language Agent Harnesses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25723/) (2026)
- [SkillNet: Create, Evaluate, and Connect AI Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04448/) (2026)
- [SkillOS: Learning Skill Curation for Self-Evolving Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06614/) (2026)
- [AgentOps: Enabling Observability of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05285/) (2024)
- [Guidelines for including grey literature and conducting multivocal literature reviews in software engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02553/) (2017)
- [Skill1: Unified Evolution of Skill-Augmented Agents via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06130/) (2026)
- [CUA-Skill: Develop Skills for Computer Using Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21123/) (2026)
- [GraSP: Graph-Structured Skill Compositions for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17870/) (2026)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Agent Skills: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07358/) (2026)
- [SkillsVote: Lifecycle Governance of Agent Skills from Collection, Recommendation to Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18401/) (2026)
- [Co-Evolving LLM Decision and Skill Bank Agents for Long-Horizon Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20987/) (2026)
- [ContractSkill: Repairable Contract-Based Skills for Multimodal Web Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20340/) (2026)
- [Counterfactual Trace Auditing of LLM Agent Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11946/) (2026)
- [Harnessing LLM Agents with Skill Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17734/) (2026)
- [Audited Skill-Graph Self-Improvement for Agentic LLMs via Verifiable Rewards, Experience Synthesis, and Continual Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23760/) (2025)
- [SkCC: Portable and Secure Skill Compilation for Cross-Framework LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03353/) (2026)
- [Thinking with Reasoning Skills: Fewer Tokens, More Accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.21764/) (2026)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [mimeo: Compiling Public Expert Corpora into Agent Skills and Testing What Transfers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00453/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Agent skills externalise reusable agent-facing behavioural knowledge and guidance as persistent artefacts that can be discovered, activated, and interpreted by LLM agents. Although a skill artefact is static at rest, its architectural responsibilities arise in use, when the artefact is selected for a run, bound to context and authority constraints, interpreted by a stochastic agent, and recorded as run evidence. We call this run-specific relation skill-in-use. This paper studies agent skill harnessing: the architectural responsibilities that govern the transition from skill artefacts to skill-in-use, bound the executable consequences associated with skill-in-use, and capture evidence for attribution, verification, repair, and evolution. This paper provides a catalogue of ten empirically grounded architectural patterns (five core, five supporting) for skill harnessing and synthesises them into a reference architecture with four responsibility layers: Supply Chain, Mediation, Execution Control, and Evidence & Feedback. We evaluate the architecture through cross-instantiation across 8 selected systems. The resulting patterns and reference architecture provide a vocabulary and diagnostic frame for analysing skill-harnessing responsibilities across agent systems.