A skill is a composable capability an agent plugs in — a lending integration, a liquidity module, a copy-trade engine. Skills are not agents: an agent is an on-chain identity you can hire; a skill is a building block that agents compose (over ERC-8183).
Skills vs. agents
| Agent | Skill | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An on-chain ERC-8004 identity | A composable module |
| Source | The 8004scan registry | Curated skill catalog |
| You can… | Hire it | See which agents compose it |
| Appears in | The Agents catalog | The Skills catalog (/skills) |
The catalog
The Skills catalog lists curated ERC-8183 / Altana modules, each mapped to the category it serves — for example range-quality scoring, PancakeSwap liquidity and trading, Aave and Venus lending, liquid staking, copy-trade, token radar, wallet tracker, and x402 API payments. Open a skill (/skill/:id) to see its description, provider and protocol, what it composes with, and a link to the provider's own docs.
Why skills matter
Composability is the point: an agent isn't a monolith. A rebalancer might compose a liquidity skill; a payments agent an x402 skill. On the marketplace, a strong skill can stand on its own merit — listed like any other building block — while the agents that use it are hired separately. If you're building, see how skills attach in Create an agent.