Agent Capabilities Adoption Checklist

Instructions

Use this skill when translating the announcement of new agent-building capabilities into concrete engineering decisions.

1. Identify which capabilities you need

• Code execution: You need Python-based analysis, report generation, or iterative data work.
• MCP connector: You want Claude to use third-party tools exposed via remote MCP servers.
• Files API: You need to upload files once and reuse them across sessions.
• Extended prompt caching: You repeat long prompts and want lower cost and latency with longer TTL.

1. Plan your integration approach

• Decide how your agent will call these capabilities (single workflow vs. multiple specialized flows).
• Define failure handling for external tool calls (timeouts, auth, retries).

1. Operationalize

• Track cost and latency impacts (especially with caching).
• Establish evaluation criteria for agent reliability.

See [the evaluation checklist](./references/evaluation-checklist.md) for suggested acceptance checks.

Examples

• Use the MCP connector when your agent must coordinate tasks across SaaS tools exposed through an MCP server.
• Use the Files API when you want a user to upload a document once and reference it across multiple sessions.
• Use extended prompt caching when the agent repeatedly uses the same long system instructions or large context blocks.

Source

• https://claude.com/blog/agent-capabilities-api

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: uygnoey
• Source: uygnoey/skills-from-claude-blog
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.