The Ota Skill for AI Agents

Overview We built the Ota skill because too much "AI repo automation" is still fake confidence. An agent clones a repo, finds a plausible command, edits the right file, and looks smart right up until it does something expensive and stupid. It runs the wrong test path. It installs tools globally because local setup was unclear. It patches around a missing service as if the repo were healthy. That failure is usually blamed on the model. Most of the time it is a repo problem. The repository never made its real operating path explicit enough for the agent to follow without guessing. Ota already gives the repo a machine-readable contract through ota.yaml . The skill exists to teach agents how to behave around that contract: what to trust, what to run, and when to stop instead of improvising. It is not a replacement for ota.yaml . It is not an MCP server. It is not a hidden automation layer. It is the missing operating guide for agents working in Ota repos. Why an Ota skill exists We kept seeing the same pattern: the agent was fast, but the repo was vague. Without a repo-specific operating guide, an agent may see several possible paths: run the command from the README copy the command from CI infer setup from package.json , pyproject.toml , or go.mod run a broad test command because it looks conventional install tools globally because a local command failed patch around a missing service instead of identifying the readiness gap Some of those choices work. Some are dangerous. Some look fine locally and still miss the only verification path that matters. Our view is simple: if a repo has ota.yaml , that file should beat README prose, shell folklore, and whatever command happens to look familiar. Declared tasks, writable paths, setup requirements, and validation commands should be treated as contract facts. The skill exists to make that behavior explicit across agents that support skills. What the skill teaches an agent The official skill lives in ota-run/skills . It is aime