---
title: "Agent Skills"
description: "How the Arete CLI, agent skills, and agent.md work together to give your AI agent everything it needs to build with Arete."
editUrl: true
head: []
template: "doc"
sidebar: {"order":1,"hidden":false,"attrs":{}}
pagefind: true
draft: false
---

:::tip[New to coding?]
If you haven't set up an AI coding tool yet, start with [AI Tooling Setup](/agent-skills/setup-tools/) which walks you through everything from scratch.
:::

Arete is designed to be built with AI agents. This page explains the three pieces that make that work: the **CLI**, the **agent skills**, and **agent.md**.

---

## The CLI

The Arete CLI (`a4`) is the primary interface between your agent and Arete. It handles scaffolding, deployment, SDK generation, and — most importantly — live schema discovery.

```bash
# Install via Cargo (recommended)
cargo install a4-cli

# Or via npm
npm install -g @usearete/a4
```

The key command for agents is `a4 explore`:

```bash
a4 explore --json
```

This queries the Arete API and returns the live schemas for all available stacks — their entities, fields, views, and types. Because your agent runs this at setup time, it always works with accurate, up-to-date type information rather than guessing from training data.

---

## Agent Skills

Agent skills are markdown files that teach your agent how to use Arete correctly. They're installed into your project so your agent picks them up automatically as context.

Three skills are installed:

| Skill           | What it teaches                                                           |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `arete`         | Router skill — detects intent and routes the agent to the right sub-skill |
| `arete-consume` | SDK patterns for connecting to streams in TypeScript, React, and Rust     |
| `arete-build`   | Rust DSL syntax for building custom stacks from Solana program IDLs       |

Install them manually with:

```bash
npx skills add AreteA4/skills
```

Once installed, your agent knows the correct hook names, view patterns, subscription syntax, and CLI commands. Without the skills, an agent will hallucinate API shapes based on outdated training data.

---

## agent.md

`agent.md` is a plain text file hosted at `https://docs.arete.run/agent.md`. It's the bootstrap instruction set — a single URL your agent can read to set everything up from scratch.

When your agent reads `agent.md`, it:

1. Installs the Arete CLI (prefers Cargo, falls back to npm)
2. Installs the agent skills into the project
3. Runs `a4 explore --json` to load live schemas
4. Understands it's ready to build

This is why the one-liner works:

Read https://docs.arete.run/agent.md and follow the instructions to set up Arete in this project

---

## How They Fit Together

```
agent.md  ──▶  CLI installed  ──▶  a4 explore --json  ──▶  live schemas
               Skills installed ─▶  SDK patterns + DSL syntax

                         ┌────────────────────────────┐
                         │         AI Agent            │
                         │  (Cursor, Claude Code, etc) │
                         │                             │
                         │  Skills  +  Live schemas    │
                         └────────────┬───────────────┘
                                      │
                              builds correct code
                                      │
                                      ▼
                               Your Arete app
```

The CLI gives the agent **live data**. The skills give the agent **correct patterns**. Together they remove the two main failure modes: wrong types and wrong API usage.

---

## Prefer to Set Up Manually?

```bash
cargo install a4-cli
# Or: npm install -g @usearete/a4

npx @usearete/a4 create my-app --template react-ore
cd my-app

npx skills add AreteA4/skills
```

```bash
cargo install a4-cli
# Or: npm install -g @usearete/a4

npx skills add AreteA4/skills
```

For editor-specific file locations and manual configuration, see [Editor Setup](/agent-skills/setup/).

---

## Next Steps

- [Prompt Cookbook](/agent-skills/prompts/) — Copy-paste prompts for common tasks
- [Tutorial: ORE Dashboard](/agent-skills/tutorial-ore-dashboard/) — Build a complete app step by step
- [Schema Discovery](/agent-skills/explore/) — How `a4 explore` provides live type information
- [Editor Setup](/agent-skills/setup/) — Manual setup for specific editors