Guide · Agent skill
How to use the Upskill skill gap planner agent skill
Updated · written with AI from the project's own documentation and checked against our catalogue data
Upskill is an agent skill, a set of instructions that an AI agent such as Claude Code loads when you ask for it. It compares the jobs you have tracked and the postings it has ranked for you against your candidate profile, finds the skills you lack, and builds a heatmap of gaps with a recommended order to learn them. This guide explains what the skill does, how to install it, how to trigger it, and what it needs before it can produce useful results.
Upskill Skill Gap Plannerai-job-search-dev/ai-job-search · MIT Download the skill Quick start
- 1Download the ZIP. Get the upskill ZIP from our page.
- 2Unzip it into a skills folder. Place it in ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects or in .claude/skills/ inside one project.
- 3Or upload it in the Claude apps. Go to Settings, then Capabilities, then Skills, and upload the ZIP.
- 4Prepare your tracker and profile. Make sure job_search_tracker.csv and the job-application-assistant candidate profile exist in the project.
- 5Run the skill. Type /upskill for all tracked jobs, or /upskill with a job posting URL for one job.
- 6Review the heatmap. Check the gaps ranked by score and their Critical, High or Medium labels.
- 7Verify the study resources. Check the web-sourced resources before relying on them, since they may be outdated.
What the upskill skill makes the agent do
Upskill analyses the jobs you have already tracked and your current profile to identify skill gaps. It weights each gap by how often it appears across the roles you care about and how strongly those roles were fitted against your profile, then produces a heatmap of gaps.
It then searches the web for study resources and proposes a recommended order to learn things in. A targeted mode runs the same kind of analysis on one job posting URL instead of your whole tracker.
- Aggregate mode: analyses every job in job_search_tracker.csv, merged with ranked postings from job_scraper/seen_jobs.json that scored 45 or higher.
- Targeted mode: fetches a single job posting from a URL you give and lists the skills it asks for that your profile lacks.
- Reports are saved in an upskill/ folder as report-YYYY-MM-DD.md, so the next aggregate run can show what changed.
Install the upskill skill
Download the upskill ZIP from our page. Then add it to your agent in one of the two ways below.
For Claude Code, unzip the download into your personal skills folder ~/.claude/skills/ so it is available in every project, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder so it applies only to that project. For the Claude apps, upload the ZIP under Settings, then Capabilities, then Skills.
- Personal install: unzip into ~/.claude/skills/
- Project install: unzip into .claude/skills/ inside your project folder
- Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload the ZIP
Prepare the files upskill needs
Upskill cannot produce meaningful gaps without its inputs. Before running it, make sure these files exist. The skill reads the candidate profile from the job-application-assistant skill, so that skill's files need to be in place too.
- job_search_tracker.csv in the project, with the columns date, company, sector, role, role_type, channel, status, contact_person, fit_rating, notes, cv_file, cover_letter_file, source and deadline
- job_scraper/seen_jobs.json, only needed for aggregate mode
- 01-candidate-profile.md from the job-application-assistant skill, at .claude/skills/job-application-assistant/01-candidate-profile.md
- Web access, because the skill uses WebFetch and WebSearch
Trigger the skill with a request
You can invoke the skill with the slash command or with a natural request. The skill's trigger phrases include /upskill, upskill, skill gaps, what should I learn and learning plan.
Run /upskill with no argument for aggregate mode. Run /upskill followed by a job posting URL for targeted mode. In targeted mode the skill derives a short name from the job title and company for the report file.
- /upskill : analyse all tracked jobs and ranked postings
- /upskill https://example.com/job-posting : analyse one posting from its URL
- What should I learn to get the roles in my tracker?
- Show me my skill gaps across the jobs I have tracked.
/upskillRead the gap heatmap and learning plan
In aggregate mode each skill gets a score. Each job contributes a weight of (100 minus its fit rating) divided by 100, so a poorly fitting role counts for more gaps. Skills that show up in many weighted roles rank higher and are labelled Critical, High or Medium.
The skill tags each synthesised gap as domain, soft, tooling or credential, so you can see whether a gap is technical, about the industry, about ways of working, or a certification that several postings prefer. Treat the study resources as a starting point to check, because they come from web search and may be outdated or inaccurate.
- Critical: hard skills with high scores, or domain gaps across most tracked jobs
- High: hard skills with moderate scores, or soft and tooling gaps that appear consistently
- Medium: lower-frequency hard skills
Safety notes: scripts and network access
Upskill does not run scripts. It is allowed to read and write files and to use web tools. Because it fetches pages and search results, it uses the network.
Job postings and study resources are treated as untrusted third-party data, never as instructions. The skill follows the trust boundary rules in job-application-assistant's 09-web-research.md. Even so, the agent still reads that text into its context, so a posting containing injected instructions is a risk you should keep in mind.
- Runs scripts: no
- Uses network: yes (WebFetch and WebSearch)
- Licence: MIT
Tips for better results
Keep your candidate profile current, because the skill removes any skill your profile already mentions. Fill in fit_rating for every tracker row you evaluate. A blank fit rating adds no weight, and the skill reports how many such rows it skipped.
If some ranked jobs were scored before gap data was saved, the skill skips them and reports the count. The message suggests running /rank --all to re-score them.
- Check that the profile lists your skills in plain words, such as Python, so the match works.
- Run aggregate mode regularly to see how the report changes over time.
- Use targeted mode to test one job before you commit to a study plan.
What people use it for
- Finding which skills appear most often across the roles you have applied for and tracked.
- Building a study order for a career change, tied to real job postings.
- Checking one specific job posting to see what you would need to add before applying.
- Saving gap reports over time to see whether your gaps are shrinking.
Frequently asked questions
How do I install the upskill agent skill?
Download the upskill ZIP from our page and unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/ for all your projects, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder for one project. In the Claude apps, upload the ZIP under Settings, then Capabilities, then Skills.
What does upskill need to run?
It needs Claude Code or another SKILL.md-compatible agent, a job_search_tracker.csv file in the project, and the candidate profile 01-candidate-profile.md from the job-application-assistant skill. Aggregate mode also needs job_scraper/seen_jobs.json, and the skill needs web access.
Is the upskill skill free?
The skill is released under the MIT licence, as listed on its page. The page does not list a price, so check the source for any terms beyond the licence.
How do I trigger upskill?
Type /upskill for all tracked jobs, or /upskill followed by a job posting URL for one job. Natural requests such as what should I learn or show my skill gaps also match its trigger phrases.
Why does upskill skip some of my ranked jobs?
Ranked entries are only used if they have a recorded gaps field and a score of at least 45. Older entries scored before gap saving existed are skipped and counted, and the skill suggests running /rank --all to re-score them.
Can I trust the study resources upskill finds?
Not as verified. The resources are fetched from the web and may be outdated or inaccurate, so check each one before you rely on it.
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Our verdict
Upskill suits job seekers who already track applications in a CSV and want a prioritized list of skills to build, and career changers who want a study plan tied to real postings. It is a poor choice if you have no tracker or candidate profile, since it cannot produce meaningful gaps without them, or if you need study resources you can treat as verified.
Download the skill