Cognitive-Core-Skills

Name: Cognitive-Core-Skills
Author: eli-labz

Pending

A universal, industry-neutral taxonomy of cognitive core skills (perception, memory, reasoning, planning, action, verification, learning, governance) for LLMs, SLMs, AI agents, and world models — with schemas, 159 skill cards, benchmarks, and CI.

269stars

78forks

Python

Installation

# Add to your Claude Code skills
git clone https://github.com/eli-labz/Cognitive-Core-Skills

Getting Started

Guides for using ai agents skills like Cognitive-Core-Skills.

Caveman: Cut Claude Token Use by 65%
How agent-side prompt compression works, when to use it, and when not to.
What is an AI Skills Marketplace?
Definitions, how marketplaces work, and how to choose between them in 2026.
Getting Started with AI Skills

README.md

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Cognitive-Core-Skills?

Cognitive-Core-Skills is an open-source ai agents skill for AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, and ChatGPT, built by eli-labz. A universal, industry-neutral taxonomy of cognitive core skills (perception, memory, reasoning, planning, action, verification, learning, governance) for LLMs, SLMs, AI agents, and world models — with schemas, 159 skill cards, benchmarks, and CI. It has 269 GitHub stars.

Is Cognitive-Core-Skills safe to use?

Cognitive-Core-Skills's catalog security scan is still queued. You can run an instant dependency and prompt-injection check now with the "Scan for vulnerabilities" button above.

How do I install Cognitive-Core-Skills?

Clone the repository with "git clone https://github.com/eli-labz/Cognitive-Core-Skills" and add it to your Claude Code skills directory (see the Installation section above).

What programming language is Cognitive-Core-Skills written in?

Cognitive-Core-Skills is primarily written in Python. It is open-source under eli-labz on GitHub, so you can review or fork the full source.

Are there alternatives to Cognitive-Core-Skills?

Yes. SkillsLLM lists many other AI Agents skills you can browse and compare side by side. Open the AI Agents category from the badge at the top of this page, or use the Related Skills and comparison links further down to weigh Cognitive-Core-Skills against similar tools.

Agentic AI for Beginners

Build your first AI agent from scratch - tool use, ReAct pattern, memory, deployment

41 minBeginner

Comments (0)

to leave a comment.

No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Related Skills

superpowers

by obra

An agentic skills framework & software development methodology that works.

234,966

super-dev claude-swarm

Cognitive Core Skills

Cognitive core skills are the mental operating capabilities an LLM or AI Agent needs to move from chat response to useful digital co-worker. An LLM predicts and generates language. An AI Agent wraps that LLM with memory, planning, tools, integrations, verification, and action control so it can pursue goals inside real workflows.

Cognitive core skills are the agent operating brain: perception to know the situation, memory to preserve continuity, reasoning to judge, planning to sequence work, action selection to execute, verification to confirm progress, learning to improve, and governance to stay safe.

Repository overview

This repository contains a universal, industry-neutral taxonomy package for:

LLM capabilities
SLM capabilities
AI agent capabilities
World model capabilities
Text-based cognitive skills
Human-action cognitive skills
Persistent LLM Wiki knowledge operations
OKF-style knowledge cataloging operations

Why star or fork this project

Practical: ready-to-use taxonomy data, schemas, and validation tests.
Operational: includes human-action skills and governance-oriented constructs.
Reusable: JSON, YAML, and markdown skill cards for easy integration.
Collaborative: contribution templates, roadmap, and CI in place.

Quickstart

Read the taxonomy package docs in docs/cognitive-core-skills/.
Explore machine-readable data in data/.
Browse generated skill cards in Skills/index.md.
Run validation locally.

Current status

Taxonomy version: 1.0.0
Skill count: 159
Domains covered: 13
Generated skill files in Skills/: 159 skill cards plus Skills/index.md
CI enabled for taxonomy and benchmark fixture tests

Capability model differences

System type	Primary strength	Typical limitation without augmentation
LLM	Broad language understanding, synthesis, reasoning, drafting	Weak continuity and no autonomous bounded action by default
SLM	Low-latency, low-cost, private, constrained inference	Narrower transfer and lower open-domain depth
AI Agent	Goal pursuit across memory, planning, tools, and actions	Requires robust verification, control gates, and oversight
World Model	State and dynamics modeling, simulation, forecasting	Requires grounded observations and updated environment state

Key package paths

Documentation:

docs/cognitive-core-skills/README.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/taxonomy.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/text-based-skills.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/human-action-skills.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/world-model-skills.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/llm-wiki-skills.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/okf-skills.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/evaluation-rubric.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/cognitive-debt-index.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/glossary.md
docs/cognitive-core-skills/CHANGELOG.md

Machine-readable artifacts:

data/cognitive-core-skills.json
data/cognitive-core-skills.yaml
schemas/cognitive-core-skill.schema.json
schemas/cognitive-core-taxonomy.schema.json

Benchmarks and examples:

benchmarks/rubric-task-traces.json
examples/cognitive-core-skill-card.md
examples/agent-skill-assessment.md

Generated skills directory:

Skills/index.md
Skills/<skill_id>.md (one file per taxonomy skill)

Tests and CI:

tests/test_cognitive_core_taxonomy.py
tests/test_rubric_benchmark_fixtures.py
.github/workflows/taxonomy-ci.yml

Community and project health:

CONTRIBUTING.md
GOOD_FIRST_ISSUE_GUIDE.md
RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md
ROADMAP.md
.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/bug_report.yml
.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/feature_request.yml
.github/pull_request_template.md

Recent taxonomy update

Added human-action skill:

ha_consequence_understanding - Human-Action Consequence Understanding

Purpose: understand likely downstream operational, compliance, and workflow consequences before executing human-action tokens.

Added planning skill:

plan_long_horizon_skill - Long-Horizon Skill

Purpose: maintain coherent long-horizon execution across milestones, dependencies, and replanning triggers.

Run validation locally

py -m pytest tests/test_cognitive_core_taxonomy.py tests/test_rubric_benchmark_fixtures.py -q

How to add a new skill

Add the skill card to data/cognitive-core-skills.json.
Mirror the same skill in data/cognitive-core-skills.yaml.
Ensure unique id and unique name.
Add valid related_skills references.
Regenerate the Skills/ folder markdown cards from taxonomy data.
Update docs/cognitive-core-skills/CHANGELOG.md under Unreleased.
Run the local pytest command above.

Regenerate skill markdown files

When taxonomy data changes, regenerate skill card markdown files in Skills/ so they remain synchronized with data/cognitive-core-skills.json.

Expected result:

one markdown file per skill id
one generated index file at Skills/index.md

Run:

py scripts/generate_skills.py

Attribution and license boundaries

This taxonomy package adapts high-level architecture/documentation patterns from:

third-party/autoresearch-master
third-party/knowledge-catalog-main
third-party/knowledge-catalog-main/okf

No third-party source code is copied into taxonomy artifacts.

Star history

If this taxonomy is useful to you, a star helps others discover it and tells us which direction to invest in next.

Support this project

Star the repo to bookmark it and help with discoverability.
Fork the repo if you want to adapt the taxonomy, schemas, or skill cards for your own agent stack.
Open an issue for a missing skill, a schema question, or a benchmark idea. See GOOD_FIRST_ISSUE_GUIDE.md for beginner-friendly entry points.
Share a "Show and tell" write-up if you build something on top of this taxonomy once Discussions are enabled.