Agent Skills

Agent skills are self-contained instruction files that teach an AI coding agent how to use a tool. Docling ships a usage skill inside its Python package so that once Docling is installed, agents can discover it automatically and learn — from documentation authored by the Docling project — how to convert, extract, and chunk documents correctly.

Installing and discovering the skill

Use library-skills — a small CLI tool that scans your project's installed dependencies, finds any bundled skills, and installs them as symbolic links into your agent's skills directory. Because symlinks are used, the skill content updates automatically whenever you upgrade Docling.

If you already use Docling in your project (recommended)

If docling is already a dependency in your project, run:

=== "Most agents (Codex, Cursor, Copilot, …)"

```bash
uvx library-skills
```

=== "Claude Code"

Claude Code uses `.claude/` instead of `.agents/`. Pass `--claude` so the
skill is installed into `.claude/skills`:

```bash
uvx library-skills --claude
```

library-skills reads your pyproject.toml, scans the project environment for installed packages, and creates a symlink to Docling's bundled skill in .agents/skills/docling (or .claude/skills/docling). That's all there is to it.

If Docling is not yet in your project

If Docling is not yet a dependency, library-skills won't find it automatically. Install Docling first (uv add docling / pip install docling), then run uvx library-skills as above.

Manual path registration

If your agent runtime does not yet support the .agents/ directory convention, locate the skill directory and register it manually:

python -c "import importlib.util, pathlib; \
print(pathlib.Path(importlib.util.find_spec('docling').origin).parent / '.agents/skills/docling')"

Then point your agent at the printed path (or at SKILL.md inside it).

The Docling usage skill

The skill lives inside the installed package at:

docling/.agents/skills/docling/
├── SKILL.md                     # entry point: what Docling is + when to use each path
└── references/
    ├── cli.md                   # convert any format from the command line
    ├── python-sdk.md            # DocumentConverter + PipelineOptions, batch, ASR, image/table export
    ├── extraction.md            # DocumentExtractor — pull typed fields out of a document (beta)
    ├── rag.md                   # chunking + LangChain / LlamaIndex / Haystack loaders
    ├── service-client.md        # remote conversion via docling-serve (self-hosted or managed)
    └── slim-packaging.md        # docling-slim install extras

SKILL.md is a short router; the references/*.md files are loaded on demand, so an agent reads only what the current task needs.

What the skill covers

The skill routes an agent to the right Docling entry point for the task:

Usage vs. development skills

The skill described here is a usage skill — it helps agents use Docling. Contributors working on Docling use separate development skills kept in the repository's own .agents/skills/ directory; those are not shipped in the package.