https://readthedocs-about--377.org.readthedocs.build/2026-02-11T00:00:00-08:002026-02-11T00:00:00-08:002026-02-11T00:00:00-08:00Eric Holschertag:readthedocs-about--377.org.readthedocs.build,2026-02-11:/blog/2026/02/readthedocs-skills-api-config/

<p>Trying to figure out how to pass up-to-date information to AI agents is a hard problem currently. We have experimented …</p>

<p>Trying to figure out how to pass up-to-date information to AI agents is a hard problem currently. We have experimented with MCP servers and <code>llms.txt</code>, but we have found that <a href="https://agentskills.io/home">Agent Skills</a> are the current best way to handle this problem explicitly.</p> <p>We have been building the <a href="https://github.com/readthedocs/skills">Read the Docs Skills repository</a> to allow more experimentation. Today we are highlighting two skills that we've found the most useful: the Read the Docs API skill and the Read the Docs Config skill.</p> <p>Each skill is a small, self-contained package with a <code>SKILL.md</code> that teaches an agent how to perform a specific task. You can easily read them to understand more about how they work.</p> <p>You can also read the <a href="https://docs.readthedocs.com/platform/stable/reference/agent-skills.html">Read the Docs Skills documentation</a> for more background and usage guidance.</p> <p><img alt="Read the Docs API skill example" src="/images/posts/skills-example.png"></p> <h2 id="read-the-docs-api-skill">Read the Docs API skill</h2> <p>The <a href="https://github.com/readthedocs/skills/blob/main/skills/readthedocs-api/SKILL.md">Read the Docs API skill</a> gives your AI agent the ability to interact with the <a href="https://docs.readthedocs.com/platform/stable/api/v3.html">Read the Docs REST API</a>. This requires having an <a href="https://docs.readthedocs.com/platform/stable/api/v3.html#token">API token</a> with the appropriate permissions.</p> <p>If you want to manage updates or changes to your project (eg. adding a redirect for the current PR, or triggering a new build), this skill will help you do that.</p> <h2 id="read-the-docs-config-writer-skill">Read the Docs Config Writer skill</h2> <p>The <a href="https://github.com/readthedocs/skills/blob/main/skills/readthedocs-write-config/SKILL.md">Read the Docs Config Writer skill</a> helps you create or update <code>.readthedocs.yaml</code> files. It has information about the actual configuration options available, and won't try to invent options that don't exist.</p> <p>This skill should automatically be used whenever you ask your agent to help you write or update a Read the Docs configuration file. 🪄</p> <h2 id="install-the-skills">Install the skills</h2> <p>Clone the repository and use the skills directly by copying them where your agent expects skills to be:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>git<span class="w"> </span>clone<span class="w"> </span>https://github.com/readthedocs/skills.git </code></pre></div> <p>If your agent supports the <a href="https://skills.sh/docs/cli">Agent Skills CLI</a>, you can install the repository with:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>npx<span class="w"> </span>skills<span class="w"> </span>add<span class="w"> </span>readthedocs/skills </code></pre></div> <h2 id="give-us-feedback">Give us feedback</h2> <p>We're excited to see how to integrate AI tooling in a way that works well for our community. This is a fast moving space, and providing context to AI tooling is an interesting challenge we want to help solve.</p>