Anthropic launches enterprise ‘Agent Skills’ and opens the standard, challenging OpenAI in workplace AI

Source: VentureBeat

Summary

Anthropic said on Wednesday it would release its Agent Skills technology as an open standard, a strategic bet that sharing its approach to making AI assistants more capable will cement the company’s position in the fast‑evolving enterprise software market. The San Francisco‑based artificial intelligence firm aims to give enterprises a way to extend the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with custom, plug‑in‑style functions that can be shared across organizations.

The move follows a wave of similar initiatives from competitors such as OpenAI’s “function calling” and Microsoft’s “Copilot plugins,” but Anthropic is positioning its offering as a more open, interoperable framework that can work with any LLM, not just its own Claude models.

Key points

• Open standard: Anthropic will publish the specifications for Agent Skills, allowing other developers and vendors to build compatible plugins.
• Enterprise focus: The technology is designed to let businesses create tailored AI assistants that can perform domain‑specific tasks, access internal data, and integrate with existing tools.
• Strategic positioning: By promoting openness, Anthropic hopes to become a central player in the emerging ecosystem of AI‑driven enterprise workflows.

Anthropic’s announcement underscores the growing importance of extensible AI assistants in the enterprise sector, where companies are looking for ways to safely and efficiently harness the power of large language models for specialized use cases.