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ASK

Introduction

What ASK is and why it exists.

Introduction

ASK (Agent Skills Kit) is a CLI that downloads version-specific library documentation and source for AI coding agents, then generates an AGENTS.md index plus per-library Claude Code skills under .claude/skills/<name>-docs/SKILL.md.

The agent reads the docs that match the version your project actually runs — not the snapshot baked into its training data.

Why this exists

Training data ages. Lockfiles don't.

When an agent recalls "how zod works" from memory, it's recalling whatever shape the API had at the cutoff. When the project pins zod@3.22.0, the agent should be reading ~/.ask/...zod/3.22.0/README.md, not guessing.

ASK bridges the two by:

  1. Reading the version from bun.lock → package-lock.json → pnpm-lock.yaml → yarn.lock → package.json range fallback.
  2. Fetching docs/source once and caching under ~/.ask/ (override via ASK_HOME).
  3. Printing absolute paths to stdout, errors to stderr — safe for $(ask …) composition.

How agents consume ASK

Two surfaces, depending on workflow:

  • Declarative — ask.json at the project root lists libraries. ask install resolves every entry, materializes docs under .ask/docs/<name>@<version>/, writes a Claude skill, and regenerates the auto-managed block in AGENTS.md.
  • One-shot — ask docs <spec> and ask src <spec> emit cached paths for ad-hoc reads. Composable with rg, cat, fd.

Next steps

  • Installation — install the CLI and run it against an existing project.
Installation