Agent Skills

Agent Skills are self-contained playbooks that teach an AI agent how to use EMCP Tools for a specific job: page building, block editing, theme building, plugin integrations, GSAP animation, auditing, and more. You can install them locally in your AI client or let a connected MCP agent discover and load them at runtime.

The bundled skills

As of 3.18.0, the bundle ships 35 skills: 29 top-level skills, some with nested sub-skills (slugs like emcp-themes/astra) that an agent loads only for that topic.

Skill	Covers
emcp-skills	Elementor page building (includes industry packs), with the emcp-skills/audit and emcp-skills/recipes deep-dives.
emcp-blocks	Custom Gutenberg blocks and the block sandbox workflow.
emcp-gutenberg	The WordPress block editor.
emcp-themer	The builder-agnostic theme builder.
emcp-themes	Active-theme discovery and cross-theme workflows, with the emcp-themes/astra sub-skill.
emcp-betheme	BeTheme options and BeBuilder pages.
emcp-blocksy	Blocksy theme, Blocksy blocks and Companion extensions.
emcp-generatepress, emcp-kadence	GeneratePress and Kadence theme settings.
emcp-generateblocks, emcp-kadence-blocks, emcp-spectra, emcp-otter	The independent Gutenberg block packs.
emcp-bricks, emcp-breakdance, emcp-avada, emcp-divi, emcp-thrive, emcp-oxygen, emcp-kirki, emcp-wpbakery, emcp-beaver, emcp-visual-composer	The standalone page builders (see below).
emcp-gsap	GSAP core, plugins, WordPress handles, Elementor lifecycle, accessibility, and verification.
emcp-plugins	ACF, Meta Box, WooCommerce and supported plugin dispatchers, with the emcp-plugins/addons, emcp-plugins/forms and emcp-plugins/seo sub-skills.
emcp-performance	Performance auditing.
emcp-security	Security & malware scanning.
emcp-seo-a11y	SEO & accessibility.
emcp-php-snippets	The human-gated PHP snippet sandbox.

Your own skills can sit beside these: see Custom skills below.

Industry skill packs

emcp-skills (the Elementor page-building skill) bundles 10 vertical knowledge packs: Dental, Med-Spa, Therapy, Fitness, Automotive, Food & Restaurant, Wedding, Real Estate, Legal, and Photography. When the agent detects the site’s industry, it auto-routes to the matching pack, which pulls together the right Brand Kit, sample prompts, and templates for that vertical, so a dental-clinic build and a law-firm build get industry-appropriate content and styling from the same skill, not a generic one-size-fits-all page.

Two ways to use them

1. Install locally in your AI client

Open EMCP Tools → Skills (in the Build group of the EMCP sidebar; the screen is titled Agent Skills) and use the “Install in your AI client” section. The “Install guide” tabs on the same screen (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Antigravity, Other MCP client) give numbered steps with copyable paths. Two formats are offered: Folder bundle: Claude Code, Cursor, the original folder bundle (one zip containing all skills as subfolders, for clients that read a skills folder directly, e.g. Claude Code, Cursor), and, new in v3.6.5, Claude Desktop bundle: one zip per skill, which packages each skill as its own zip inside one outer zip, matching Claude Desktop’s one-zip-at-a-time import model (nested sub-skills are flattened to a hyphenated name it accepts). Once installed, your client loads the skill instructions from disk. This works with any client and doesn’t depend on the MCP connection.

2. Load them at runtime (Pro)

A connected MCP agent can discover and load the skills over the MCP connection, no local install needed. This is powered by two read-only Pro tools:

Tool	Purpose
list-skills	Catalog of the available skills, with a search filter.
get-skill	Load one skill’s full instructions by slug.

A ## Skills catalog is also injected into the MCP discovery context, so the agent sees a compact menu of the skills the moment it connects, then pulls a full playbook with get-skill only when a task matches. This is progressive disclosure: the agent carries a small menu at all times and loads a heavy, detailed playbook only on demand.

Runtime exposure is Pro-only and requires the MCP server to be enabled.

The Agent Skills module

Runtime skill exposure is controlled by the Agent Skills module (Pro, on by default). You can flip it in two places: the “Let the agent load them at runtime” switch at the top of EMCP Tools → Skills, or the Agent Skills card on EMCP Tools → Modules (in the AI & agents group). Both change the same module. The Skills screen shows the current state: “Live: your MCP server is exposing the Skills catalog”, “Off: agents do not see the Skills catalog.”, or a warning when the MCP server itself is off.

Turning the module off:

• removes the list-skills and get-skill tools, and
• removes the ## Skills injection from the discovery context (reclaiming its token footprint).

It does not affect the local Skills download. You can still grab the bundles from the Skills screen and install them in your client regardless of the module’s state. The Skills catalog switch on EMCP Tools → Context also lets you leave the catalog out of the discovery context while keeping the tools.

Custom skills (Pro)

New in 3.18.0. Write your own playbooks on EMCP Tools → Skills → Custom skills (the “Your own skills” section of the Skills screen has Write a custom skill, or Manage custom skills once you have some). Agents see them in the skills catalog beside the bundled ones and load them with get-skill, exactly like a bundled skill; AI Chat sees them too.

• New skill opens the editor. “Details” holds the Name, the Slug (agents load the skill by this name; 3 to 60 lowercase letters, digits and dashes, and it can’t reuse a bundled skill’s slug) and When to use it (start with “Use when…”: the first sentence goes into the catalog every agent sees; up to 1,024 characters).
• “Playbook” is the Markdown Instructions editor, with Start from a template to get going. The side panel estimates what the skill costs: the part that is always in context and the part loaded on demand, and previews “What agents always see”.
• The Inject into agent context switch decides whether agents see the skill. Click Save skill to save.
• The list shows each skill with its Inject switch, token count and Edit. A “Skill stats” panel shows the catalog size against the 8k-token Context budget, the bundled skill count and how many of your skills are injected, and warns when the MCP server or the Agent Skills module is off.

Custom skills are included only at runtime: the downloadable bundles on the Skills screen still hold the bundled skills only.

See also

• Modules: the full module list and how the framework works.
• Compact tool mode: collapse the MCP surface to 3 dispatcher tools for clients with tool caps.

Native builder skills in 3.17.0

Dedicated guidance covers Bricks, Breakdance, Avada, Divi 5, Thrive Architect, Oxygen 6, Kirki 6, WPBakery, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer and Otter Blocks, alongside the existing theme and block guidance. Runtime discovery and both downloadable formats include the bundled integration instructions. Bricks downloads also preserve supporting upstream references and attribution.

Read the installed schema first. A skill can describe vendor features more broadly than the adapter supports; it does not bypass tool toggles, version gates or native permissions. Reconnect a long-lived MCP process after an update to load the current PHP and skill catalog.

Bricks guidance credits Gaurav Tiwari (@wpgaurav) and the MIT-licensed bricks-skills project. Divi guidance credits Shashank Gupta / DiviLove for the referenced Divi 5 skill. Use the builder setup guide to find each native workflow and its limits.

From a draft to an agency handoff

Use the AI Elementor agency workflow to turn a brief into acceptance checks, review desktop and mobile output, record a targeted revision, and prepare a handoff with unresolved work clearly identified.