Agentic systems increasingly rely on reusable procedural capabilities, \textit{a.k.a., agentic skills}, to execute long-horizon workflows reliably. These capabilities are callable modules that package procedural knowledge with explicit applicability conditions, execution policies, termination criteria, and reusable interfaces. Unlike one-off plans or atomic tool calls, skills operate (and often do well) across tasks.
This paper maps the skill layer across the full lifecycle (discovery, practice, distillation, storage, composition, evaluation, and update) and introduces two complementary taxonomies. The first is a system-level set of \textbf{seven design patterns} capturing how skills are packaged and executed in practice, from metadata-driven progressive disclosure and executable code skills to self-evolving libraries and marketplace distribution. The second is an orthogonal \textbf{representation $\times$ scope} taxonomy describing what skills \emph{are} (natural language, code, policy, hybrid) and what environments they operate over (web, OS, software engineering, robotics).
We analyze the security and governance implications of skill-based agents, covering supply-chain risks, prompt injection via skill payloads, and trust-tiered execution, grounded by a case study of the ClawHavoc campaign in which nearly 1{,}200 malicious skills infiltrated a major agent marketplace, exfiltrating API keys, cryptocurrency wallets, and browser credentials at scale. We further survey deterministic evaluation approaches, anchored by recent benchmark evidence that curated skills can substantially improve agent success rates while self-generated skills may degrade them. We conclude with open challenges toward robust, verifiable, and certifiable skills for real-world autonomous agents.
SoK: Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Taxonomy, Architectures, Evaluation, and Research Directions
University of North Dakota（北达科他大学）；Youngstown State University（青年州大学）；University of Toledo（托莱多大学）；University of Missouri（密苏里大学）；Tribhuvan University（特里布文大学）
SkillFlow: Flow-Driven Recursive Skill Evolution for Agentic Orchestration
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳））；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；Zhejiang University（浙江大学）
OpenClaw-Skill: Collective Skill Tree Search for Agentic Large Language Models
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（香港理工大学）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology（皇家墨尔本理工大学）；Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（北京航空航天大学）
Skillsets on the Chain: A Blockchain-based Zero-Trust Framework for Agentic AI Networking
School of Electronic Information and Communications, the Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学电子信息与通信学院）；Peng Cheng Laboratory（鹏城实验室）；Pazhou Laboratory (Huangpu)（琶洲实验室（黄埔））；School of Mechanical Engineering and Electronic Information, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan)（中国地质大学（武汉）机械工程与电子信息学院）；School of Artificial Intelligence, Xidian University（西安电子科技大学人工智能学院）
CASCADE: Cumulative Agentic Skill Creation through Autonomous Development and Evolution
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States（加州大学伯克利分校材料科学与工程系）；Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, United States（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室材料科学部）；Laboratory of Artificial Chemical Intelligence (LIAC), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland（日内瓦联邦理工学院化学科学与工程研究所人工化学智能实验室）；National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Catalysis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland（日内瓦联邦理工学院催化研究国家中心）
EvoTrainer: Co-Evolving LLM Policies and Training Harnesses for Autonomous Agentic Reinforcement Learning
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（深圳先进技术研究院，中国科学院）；Tongyi Lab , Alibaba Group（通义实验室，阿里巴巴集团）；Alibaba Group（阿里巴巴集团）；SUAT（深圳大学）
Embodied-BenchForge: A Closed-Loop Agentic Workflow for Embodied Benchmark Construction
QiYuan Lab（启元实验室）；University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）；Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；Northeastern University（东北大学）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
Agentic Publication Protocol: An Attempt to Modernize Scientific Publication
Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik（马克斯·普朗克量子光学研究所）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）；Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics（莱因韦伯理论物理研究所）
