# Agent skills

A skill is a short, opinionated instruction file an agent reads before it
acts. These cover the judgement calls this API asks for — which model fits a
brief, what a generation will cost, how to write a prompt that produces the
shot someone described, and what to do when a call fails.

They ship with the `aicontentdrop` package and are served here so an agent
can fetch one without installing anything.

| Skill | What it decides |
| --- | --- |
| [Picking an AI video model (and knowing what it costs)](/skills/ai-video-model-picker) | Choose the right AI video model for a brief and quote its credit cost before generating, using the AI Content Drop catalogue. Use when asked to generate a video and you must decide which model, when someone asks what a batch of clips will cost, or when a model id is rejected as unknown. |
| [Failing well against the AI Content Drop API](/skills/api-error-handling) | Read AI Content Drop API failures correctly and decide whether to retry, change the request, or stop. Covers the error envelope and its 21 codes, rate limits and Retry-After, idempotency conflicts, and the two response shapes the generation endpoints can return. Use when a call to aicontentdrop.com fails, returns 4xx or 5xx, is rate limited, or when writing a retry loop against the API. |
| [Running many generations without melting the rate limit](/skills/batch-generation-runner) | Run many AI Content Drop reads or generations efficiently instead of looping one HTTP call at a time. Covers POST /v1/batch for reads, POST /v1/models/cost for bulk quoting, idempotency keys, and the submit-and-poll loop for generations. Use when handling a storyboard, a shot list, a spreadsheet of prompts, or any job that means more than two or three calls. |
| [What it costs, and how to say so before spending it](/skills/credits-and-plans) | Answer what an AI Content Drop generation costs, what a plan includes, and whether a user can afford a job before running it. Covers the flat per-generation credit model, the free tier, plan tiers and top-up packs, checking a balance, and the charge-on-success rule. Use when asked about pricing, credits, billing, "can I afford this", "how much will this cost", or when a call returns insufficient_credits. |
| [Generating images, and not overpaying for drafts](/skills/image-generation) | Generate images through the AI Content Drop API and choose between the 27 image models by cost and job. Covers POST /v1/generate/image, picking a model for drafts versus finals, the sandbox rehearsal, and using a generated image as the first frame of a video. Use when asked for an image, a thumbnail, a product still, a poster, concept art, or a reference frame to animate. |
| [Writing a video prompt that survives the model](/skills/video-prompt-writer) | Write a prompt that actually produces the shot someone described, for any AI Content Drop video model. Covers the shot-first structure, camera and lighting language models respond to, why text-to-video cannot preserve a specific subject, when to use a reference frame instead, and how to iterate without wasting credits. Use when asked to generate a video, turn a brief or script into a prompt, fix a generation that came out wrong, or animate an existing image. |

## Using them

Any agent that can read a URL can use a skill: point it at the markdown and
let it follow the instructions.

```bash
curl https://aicontentdrop.com/skills/ai-video-model-picker/SKILL.md
```

Enumerate them from [`/skills/index.json`](/skills/index.json), which carries
a description and URL for each. Installing the plugin brings all of them
along — see [the install guide](/plugin).

## These are guides, not the product

The skills teach craft. Doing the work needs the API: the tools are described
at [/docs/mcp](/docs/mcp) and the REST surface at [/docs/api](/docs/api).
Browsing the catalogue and pricing a job need no credential.