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Surface

AI

Skills

The skills of Surface for agents, and how to install them.This page as Markdown
Statuscurrent on 2026-11-06, for version 0.
Related documentsSurface for agents, plugins, MCP server
A skill is a Markdown file with a name, a description and instructions. An agent reads the description first. It reads the instructions only when a task needs them, so a skill costs little context.

1. The skills of Surface

Skill
When the agent uses it
What it gives
surface-code-writer
It creates, edits or analyzes a .surf or .surfs file
The tools of the MCP server, the order in which to call them, and the commands without the server
surface-best-practices
It writes Surf code
The rules of the files, the declarations, the traits, the formats of Locale, the markup and the styles that differ from TypeScript, Rust, Svelte and Tailwind CSS
The files are in plugins/surface/skills of the repository. This website serves each one:

2. Install a skill

The plugin installs both skills. To install a skill without the plugin:
  • Make a folder with the name of the skill in the folder of skills of your agent. For Claude Code, the folder is ~/.claude/skills for each project, or .claude/skills for one project.
  • Download the file into that folder:
  • bash
    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/surface-best-practicescurl -fsSL https://surface.solenovis.com/skills/surface-best-practices/SKILL.md -o ~/.claude/skills/surface-best-practices/SKILL.md
  • Do the same steps for surface-code-writer.
An agent with no support for skills can read the same file as an instruction file.

3. A skill and the MCP server

A skill gives rules. It cannot know each name of the language. The MCP server checks each name with the compiler. So use both: the skill tells the agent to call check_code, and check_code finds what the rules miss.