> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://agentcompanies.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What are Agent Companies?

> Agent Companies is a lightweight, vendor-neutral extension for describing AI companies with markdown packages.

Agent Companies extends Agent Skills from single reusable capabilities to whole-company composition.
At its core, an agent company package is a folder of markdown manifests rooted in one or more of `COMPANY.md`, `TEAM.md`, `AGENTS.md`, `PROJECT.md`, `TASK.md`, and compatible `SKILL.md` files.

```text theme={null}
my-company/
|-- COMPANY.md
|-- teams/
|   `-- engineering/TEAM.md
|-- agents/
|   |-- ceo/AGENTS.md
|   `-- cto/AGENTS.md
|-- projects/
|   `-- q2-launch/PROJECT.md
|-- tasks/
|   `-- monday-review/TASK.md
`-- skills/
    `-- review/SKILL.md
```

## How Agent Companies work

Agent Companies keeps the same progressive disclosure model as Agent Skills:

1. **Discovery**: load package names, descriptions, slugs, and lightweight manifest metadata.
2. **Activation**: read the full company, team, agent, project, task, or skill manifest when the runtime needs it.
3. **Execution**: load supporting references, assets, and scripts only when those instructions call for them.

This keeps the base context small while still allowing a runtime to reason about a whole company.

## The package files

Each manifest has a distinct role:

* `COMPANY.md`: defines the company boundary, defaults, goals, includes, and optional requirements.
* `TEAM.md`: defines reusable org subtrees and manager relationships.
* `AGENTS.md`: defines role behavior, reporting lines, and skill attachments by shortname or slug.
* `PROJECT.md`: groups planned work and starter tasks.
* `TASK.md`: defines portable starter tasks, including optional scheduling metadata.
* `SKILL.md`: remains the Agent Skills capability primitive and does not change format.

Skills are a subset of the package model, not the package model itself.
Agent Companies is about describing the whole organization in text docs, with skills as one reusable capability layer inside that structure.

## Why `SKILL.md` stays central

Agent Companies is an extension protocol, not a fork.
It does not redefine `SKILL.md` or create a Paperclip-only alternative.
Instead, it adds how companies, teams, agents, projects, and tasks compose around existing Agent Skills-compatible capability packages.

That matters for portability:

* skill libraries stay reusable outside any one company runtime
* company packages can refer to skills by shortname instead of noisy file paths
* vendor-specific fields can live in optional extensions such as `.paperclip.yaml`

## Vendor-neutral by design

The base package format is intended for any agent-company runtime.
Paperclip is one implementation and uses `.paperclip.yaml` as an optional sidecar for runtime-specific fidelity such as adapters, budgets, and approval defaults. Agent runtime vendors may support additional configuration through yaml files.

## Next steps

* [Read the specification](/specification) for the package contract.
* [See authoring best practices](/skill-creation/best-practices) for writing clean package structures.
* [Add Agent Companies support to your client](/client-implementation/adding-skills-support).