AI Engineering Lab: Skills Library

Find the Signal. Act with Intelligence. · Developed by Zorost Intelligence AI Lab

Part of AI Engineering Lab · Developed by Zorost Intelligence AI Lab · zorost.com

The skills library is a set of focused, hands-on guides for the tools you run while building in this program. Each one is a "how-to card" you keep beside you in a terminal, not a textbook to read cover to cover, but a reference to glance at the moment you need the exact install command, config key, or the fix for the failure you just hit.

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What a "skill" is in this program

A skill here is a short, actionable guide to one tool, structured so you can find the answer in seconds while you work. It is deliberately narrow: one skill, one tool, one set of commands. When you're staring at a new harness and thinking "how do I authenticate? what goes in the rules file? why is this failing?", that's the skill's job.

A skill is not:

• a marketing page (no fluff, no upsell),
• a conceptual explainer (that lives in reference/knowledge-base/),
• a full API reference (we link the official docs for that).

It is the distilled, opinionated, ZoroLogistics-shaped path from "never used this tool" to "productive this afternoon."

The skill list

Skill	One-liner
claude-code	Anthropic's terminal coding agent, CLAUDE.md, subagents, hooks, MCP, headless CI.
cursor	Anysphere's AI-native editor, Tab + Agent, Rules, MCP, Cursor Router, team tiers.
deepseek-harness	DeepSeek's open-source plugin harness, skills, goals, subagents, workflows, web GUI.
opencode	SST's terminal-native, model-agnostic agent, opencode.json, AGENTS.md, TUI.
openrouter	One API key routing to hundreds of models, :free variants, credits, fallbacks.
ollama-llamacpp	Local inference with Ollama and llama.cpp, pulls, Modelfiles, GGUF quants, VRAM picks.

Agent skills (the other kind of skill)

The guides above teach you to use a tool. agent-skills/ holds the other kind: reusable SKILL.md procedures you hand to an AI agent so it follows a senior engineer's workflow, eval-first development, prompt versioning, context budgeting, RAG checkups, agent loop safety, MCP tool design, error analysis, deployment gates, and more.

They are original Zorost Intelligence skills in the open SKILL.md convention (agentskills.io), installable into Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, and Hermes-class agents, and they encode the same doctrines this program teaches you, so by Week 12 you can read your agent's playbook because you wrote it.

→ Zorost Agent Skills Catalog, 14 skills across the Define → Build → Verify → Ship lifecycle, with the Zorost clarity standard (STE-inspired: one action per step, warnings first, evidence at exit).

Skill template

Every skill guide in this library follows the same eight sections. Keep this template in mind when you read one, it is also the shape to copy if you write a new skill (see .github/CONTRIBUTING.md).

#	Section	What it answers
1	What it is	One paragraph: who builds it, what it does, where it fits.
2	Install & auth	Exact install command and how to authenticate (account vs API key).
3	Core workflow	The happy path: open → describe → review → verify, with commands.
4	Config & rules files	The memory/config file (CLAUDE.md, opencode.json, .cursor/rules) and a template.
5	Power moves	The 3 to 5 habits that separate effective use from flailing.
6	Cost & safety	Pricing tiers, cost levers, and the blast-radius/secret rules.
7	Common failures	The errors you will actually hit, and the fix for each.
8	Sources	Official docs links (everything above is synthesized from these).

How skills connect to the weeks

Skills are not their own module, they are the operating manuals you reach for during specific weeks. The harness skills power Weeks 12 to 13; the local-stack skill powers Week 8.

Week	Week title	Skills you'll use
8	Open Models & Local Inference: GPUs, Ollama, llama.cpp	ollama-llamacpp (local inference)
12	Coding-Agent Harnesses: Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, DSH	claude-code, cursor, deepseek-harness, opencode, openrouter
13	Agentic Coding Loops & Spec-Driven Development	claude-code / opencode (rules, hooks, subagents), openrouter (model routing + cost)
14 to 17	Agents (multi-agent, MCP, OpenClaw)	deepseek-harness (subagents/workflows), openrouter (routing between models)

Typical rhythm. During Week 12 you install two harnesses (Monday), write SPEC.md (Tuesday), then drive each agent against the same task (Wednesday to Thursday) with the matching skill open in a second pane. The skill supplies the command you forgot, not the thinking, that part is yours.

How to practice a skill (the deliberate-practice loop)

Reading a skill once is not learning it. A skill only becomes yours through the same deliberate-practice loop the whole program runs on. It has four steps, and you repeat them until the tool is boring:

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flowchart LR
    Read["1. Read the skill<br/>(scan install + core workflow)"] -->
    Apply["2. Apply it to a<br/>ZoroLogistics task"] -->
    Log["3. Log cost & result<br/>(number, not vibes)"] -->
    Update["4. Update your notes<br/>(what surprised you)"] -->
    Read

1. Read: skim the skill's Install & auth and Core workflow sections only. You are not studying for a quiz; you are looking for the minimum to get one command running.
2. Apply: use the tool on a real ZoroLogistics task, not a toy. Concrete prompts that work: "route this shipment-lane query with openrouter and compare two models," or "run the Week 8 triage prompt through ollama-llamacpp at two quant sizes."
3. Log cost & result: write down the outcome as a number: tokens used, dollars spent, seconds elapsed, accuracy on the golden set, or the specific error you hit. "It worked" is not a log entry; "3 models, $0.02, best accuracy 0.91 on 50 cases" is.
4. Update notes: append one line to your running notes file (and, if the skill itself was wrong or stale, fix the skill, that's how the library stays honest). What surprised you? What did the skill get right or miss?

The loop's metric is cost-per-lesson. If a practice round costs nothing and teaches you the one flag you'll use forever, it was a bargain. If it burned budget without a logged result, it was noise. Run the loop three times on one skill before you move on; the third round is where the tool stops fighting you.

Skill combinations (which skills pair for which weeks)

Skills are rarely used alone. The combinations below are the pairings that actually happen in the weeks, and why they pair.

Week(s)	Skill pairing	Why they pair	The exercise
8	ollama-llamacpp + openrouter	Local vs hosted, same prompt, two bills	Run the triage prompt locally and via a :free model; compare latency, quality, and cost
12	claude-code + cursor	Terminal vs editor, two harnesses, one task	Drive both against the same spec and diff their output
12 to 13	opencode + openrouter	Model-agnostic harness + model router	Swap models mid-task (/model) to see quality/cost trade-offs live
13	claude-code + deepseek-harness	Rules/subagents in one, goals/workflows in the other	Port a spec-driven loop across both and compare the loops' shapes
14 to 17	deepseek-harness + openrouter	Orchestration + model routing for multi-agent work	Fan a triage team out to different models by role

The rule behind every pairing: one skill supplies the control surface (harness, orchestrator, local engine), the other supplies the model access (router, API, local weights). Keep those two roles separate in your head and every pairing becomes obvious.

Write your own skill (checklist)

The library grows when a tool you needed had no skill. If you hit a tool the program uses and the library doesn't cover, write it, but earn the right first. Work the checklist in order:

• [ ] Use the tool on a real ZoroLogistics task first. A skill you write before you've failed with the tool is a marketing page, not a how-to card.
• [ ] Collect the exact commands you actually ran, install, auth, the happy path, and the one failure you hit and fixed.
• [ ] Follow the eight-section template (table above): What it is → Install & auth → Core workflow → Config & rules → Power moves → Cost & safety → Common failures → Sources.
• [ ] Keep it to one tool. If you're describing two tools, you have two skills.
• [ ] Write the "Common failures" table from experience, not guesses. Every row should be an error you (or a teammate) actually hit and the fix that worked.
• [ ] Add a Sources section with the official docs links, everything above is synthesized from those, not from memory.
• [ ] Tie it to a week and the ZoroLogistics case. Say which week uses it and give one concrete prompt/command in the freight context.
• [ ] Link it from the skill list at the top of this file.
• [ ] Run scripts/check_links.py and fix any broken relative links you introduced.

The bar: a stranger who has never used the tool should be able to go from zero to "productive this afternoon" with your skill open in one pane, without reading the full upstream docs. If they can't, tighten the core workflow until they can.

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