Arete Agent Skills

Task-focused skills for building with Arete, the typed data and program layer for Solana applications.

Install

The normal agent onboarding flow installs the CLI, all six skills, and the Arete MCP servers:

curl -fsSL https://arete.run/install.sh | sh
a4 init -y
a4 doctor --json

Install only the skills when the rest of the project is already configured:

npx skills add AreteA4/skills

When upgrading an existing three-skill installation, run a4 init -y once. The CLI uses the skills lockfile to remove only the legacy Arete-owned arete-consume and arete-build entries after the five replacements install.

Skills

Skill	Use it for
arete	Discover capabilities, choose between a stack and a program SDK, inspect exact descriptors, and manage project dependencies
arete-streams	Query and subscribe to typed stack views from TypeScript, React, Rust, or Python, and stream a local protocol's stack with a4 stream --dev
arete-programs	Read program accounts and prepare, inspect, or execute program operations, standalone or through a stack
arete-stack-authoring	Compose stacks from published views and program SDKs, or design app-facing read models and compile Arete stack artifacts from Solana IDLs
arete-deploy	Publish programs, plan or operate hosted stack deployments, and deploy protocols privately with a4 protocol deploy
arete-protocols	Scaffold and author Arete Protocols, iterate on them locally with a4 dev and the generated client, deploy them privately and install the result, call installed protocols from TypeScript, Rust, or Python apps, let an agent act on a protocol with its own wallet (a4 protocol actions, the MCP protocol tools, an opt-in signer policy), and automate steps for users from a backend inside limits they signed (@usearete/automations)

All six skills are installed together. Their descriptions select the smallest relevant workflow at runtime; users do not need to choose individual skills during setup.

Sources of Truth

The skills deliberately avoid duplicating complete CLI and SDK manuals. Agents should resolve changing details in this order:

1. Generated SDK types and exact install descriptors.
2. a4 <command> --help and machine-readable --json output.
3. The Arete documentation MCP or docs.arete.run.
4. The workflow and safety guidance in these skills.

The skills target the catalog-first, descriptor-backed Arete CLI surface with a4 doctor, a4 explore catalog, exact descriptors, a4 know, and a4 install.

Routing and safety regressions are captured as observable behaviors in evals/cases.json.

Compatibility and Drift

Skills are versioned independently of the arete-* packages; the only hard coupling is the CLI surface they cite. Each skill declares the oldest CLI it works against in its frontmatter:

metadata:
  version: "1.0.0"
  min-cli: ">=0.13.0"

Bump a skill's version with any content change and raise min-cli only when the skill starts relying on a newer command or behavior.

CI fails when the skills drift from the released CLI. The check (node scripts/check-cli-drift.mjs, A4_BIN=... to use a local build) resolves the latest released a4, walks its --help command tree, and verifies every backtick-quoted a4 ... citation in skills/ against it — prose mentions are not citations. It also verifies the CLI satisfies every declared min-cli floor.