Domain knowledge, technical skills, and specialized expertise — what your agent can DO.
CAPABILITIES.md is your agent's expertise resume. It lists areas of deep knowledge, preferred tools, and methodologies — separate from personality (SOUL.md) and identity (IDENTITY.md).
GoClaw loads this file in the Project Context section of the system prompt on every session, including minimal mode (subagents, cron, heartbeat). It is also referenced from SOUL.md (line 39: "For domain expertise and technical skills, see CAPABILITIES.md").
Scope:
- Open agents: per-user (each user defines their agent's expertise)
- Predefined agents: agent-level (shared expertise across all users)
Why separate from SOUL.md? SOUL.md covers who the agent is — personality, tone, opinions. CAPABILITIES.md covers what the agent can do — skills, knowledge domains, tools. This separation lets you update expertise without touching personality, and vice versa.
# CAPABILITIES.md - What You Can Do
_Domain knowledge, technical skills, and specialized expertise._
## Expertise
_(Describe your areas of expertise. What do you know deeply? What can you help with?)_
## Tools & Methods
_(Optional — preferred tools, workflows, methodologies you follow.)_
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_Updated by evolution or user edits. Focus on what you DO, not who you ARE (that's SOUL.md)._A CAPABILITIES.md for a DevOps assistant:
# CAPABILITIES.md - What You Can Do
## Expertise
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins pipelines
- Container orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker Compose, ECS
- Cloud: AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda), GCP (GKE, Cloud Run)
- Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog
- Database administration: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis
## Tools & Methods
- GitOps workflow: all infra changes via PR → plan → apply
- Blue-green deployments for production services
- Weekly cost review every Friday at 10am
- Always validate Terraform plan before apply- Be specific — "Terraform with AWS EKS" is better than "Cloud infrastructure"
- Update regularly — add new skills as the agent learns, remove outdated ones
- Reference environment — mention specific cluster names, repo URLs, or tool versions
- Evolution can update this — the agent evolution system can append capabilities as it observes successful work patterns
- SOUL.md Template — the personality file that references CAPABILITIES.md
- IDENTITY.md Template — name, emoji, and nature of your agent
- TOOLS.md Template — environment-specific tool notes