What are OUAS Skills?

LLM-powered coding agents (like Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf) are trained on vast amounts of code, but they might not yet have the latest OpenUI Adaptive Standard (OUAS) specification in their training data.

Instead of hoping the agent knows how to write OUAS-compatible code or manually explaining the rules in every prompt, you can use OUAS Skills—a Context Injection Layer. This injects structured, machine-readable rules, anti-patterns, code patterns, and validation checklists directly into the agent's context window.

Generating Skills

The easiest way to inject skills is using the OUAS CLI.

npx ouas init --skills

The CLI will automatically:

1. Detect which agent environment you are using (.cursorrules, .windsurfrules, .github/copilot-instructions.md).
2. Fetch the latest core.md skills file containing the OUAS programming model.
3. Prompt you to include optional Task-specific and Framework-specific skills.
4. Write the perfectly formatted rules to your workspace configuration.

Types of Skills

The @ouas/skills package is organized into three categories:

1. Core Skills (core.md)

The master file. It teaches the agent the foundational OUAS model, including:

• Rule 001: Every component must be wrapped with withOUAS().
• Rule 002: Never hardcode layout in JSX.
• Rule 005: OUASProvider must wrap the entire app.

2. Task-Specific Skills

Scoped files for specific workflows:

• Annotate: How to retrofit existing components with withOUAS().
• Manifest: How to write meaningful JSDoc descriptions for better agent understanding.
• Agent API: How to securely implement the /discover, /config, /action, and /status endpoints.
• Security: Guidelines for using the locked: true parameter on sensitive components.
• Prompt Engineering: How to prompt the LLM layout engine to return valid JSON configs.

3. Framework Skills

Handles framework-specific nuances:

• React: Usage of the useOUAS() hook and efficient memoization.
• Next.js: Handling App Router Server vs. Client component boundaries ("use client").

Community Skills

Third-party library authors who build on top of OUAS can publish their own skills. For example, a UI component library can ship an ouas-skills.md file. The CLI's init --skills command scans your package.json dependencies for a skills field and automatically merges community instructions.

Validation & Staleness

Because the OUAS specification evolves, skills files cached locally can become stale. To ensure your agent is always following the latest spec, the ouas generate and ouas validate commands will automatically parse the version hash embedded in your .cursorrules (or equivalent) and warn you if you need to run npx ouas init --skills to update.

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Next Steps

• Explore the React SDK Reference to see the code patterns the skills file injects.
• Read about the Validation Pipeline that acts as a runtime safety net for agent-generated configs.