User Skills

Skills are user-specific financial knowledge that agents can discover and use. They’re stored as SKILL.md files following the open Agent Skills standard.

A skill might define your tagging conventions, tax categories, budget targets, or a recurring analysis workflow. Once created, any agent that connects to Treeline can find and use your skills.

How It Works

Skills are stored in ~/.treeline/skills/. Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file and optional supporting files:

~/.treeline/skills/
├── tax-categories/
│   ├── SKILL.md
│   └── references/
│       └── deduction-list.md
├── budget-targets/
│   └── SKILL.md
└── tag-conventions/
    └── SKILL.md

Creating Skills

Agents create skills on your behalf by writing SKILL.md files to the skills directory. Just ask your agent:

• “Create a skill that defines my tag conventions”
• “Make a skill for my monthly budget targets”
• “Save my tax category mappings as a skill”

Agents connected via MCP use the skills_write tool directly. CLI-based agents (OpenClaw, Claude Code) use tl skills path to find the directory and write files.

You can also create skills manually. A minimal skill:

---
name: tag-conventions
description: My transaction tagging conventions and categories.
---

# Tag Conventions

## Income Tags
- `salary` — W-2 employment income
- `freelance` — 1099 contract work
- `dividends` — Investment dividends

## Expense Tags
- `groceries` — Food and household supplies
- `dining` — Restaurants and takeout
- `transport` — Gas, transit, rideshare
- `utilities` — Electric, water, internet, phone

Discovering Skills

CLI

tl skills list            # List all skills
tl skills list --json     # JSON output for scripts
tl skills read tag-conventions/SKILL.md   # Read a skill file
tl skills path            # Show the skills directory path

MCP

Agents connected via MCP use the skills_list and skills_read tools to discover and read skills automatically.

Skill Structure

Skills follow the Agent Skills standard:

File/Directory	Required	Description
SKILL.md	Yes	Instructions and metadata with YAML frontmatter
references/	No	Supporting documents, data files, lookup tables
scripts/	No	Executable scripts the agent can run
assets/	No	Images, templates, or other static files

Frontmatter

The YAML frontmatter in SKILL.md provides metadata for discovery:

---
name: budget-targets
description: Monthly spending targets by category for 2026.
---

The description field is shown in tl skills list and skills_list MCP tool results, so agents can decide which skills to read in full.

Example Skills

Budget targets:

---
name: budget-targets
description: Monthly spending targets by category.
---

# Budget Targets (March 2026)

| Category | Monthly Target |
|----------|---------------|
| Groceries | $800 |
| Dining | $200 |
| Transport | $150 |
| Entertainment | $100 |

To check current spending against targets:
SELECT category, SUM(-amount) as spent
FROM (
  SELECT UNNEST(tags) as category, amount
  FROM transactions
  WHERE amount < 0
    AND posted_date >= DATE_TRUNC('month', now()::TIMESTAMP::DATE)
)
GROUP BY category

Tax deduction tracking:

---
name: tax-deductions
description: Track tax-deductible expenses by IRS category.
---

# Tax Deduction Categories

Tag transactions with these tags for tax tracking:

- `tax:home-office` — Home office expenses (Schedule C)
- `tax:medical` — Medical expenses (Schedule A)
- `tax:charitable` — Charitable donations (Schedule A)
- `tax:business-travel` — Business travel (Schedule C)

To summarize deductions for a tax year:
SELECT tag, SUM(-amount) as total
FROM (
  SELECT UNNEST(tags) as tag, amount
  FROM transactions
  WHERE amount < 0
    AND posted_date BETWEEN '2025-01-01' AND '2025-12-31'
)
WHERE tag LIKE 'tax:%'
GROUP BY tag
ORDER BY total DESC

Cross-Platform

Because skills follow the open Agent Skills standard, they work across any platform that supports the spec — Claude Code, OpenClaw, VS Code, Cursor, and others. Treeline just provides the storage location and discovery commands.