Skills

Trained competence characters hold in ranks (0-10): checks, weapon/ability scaling, and practice.

A skill is narrow, trained competence a character holds in ranks (0 to 10): Lockpicking, Foraging, Healing, Swordsmanship.

Skills vs stats vs abilities vs plugins

A stat is broad biological or mental aptitude (Strength, Agility, Intellect) shared by every roll of its kind.
An ability is a named, costed move with a cooldown (Fireball, Shield Bash).
A skill is narrow competence (0-10 ranks). It adds to checks of that kind and scales heals and hits.
Skills are NOT plugins. Do not create a plugin, custom fields, or hooks to track skills or skill progression. The engine already handles skill progression natively.

Skills are declared on the game under settings.skills. Each skill has:

name: Short display name, e.g. "Lockpicking", "Foraging", "Swordsmanship".
description: The acts it covers, e.g. "foraging for wild herbs, hunting edible roots, gathering forest sustenance". The adjudicator uses this description to decide which skill applies to a player's action.

Characters gain practice automatically whenever they:

Make a roll that draws on the skill (harder checks teach more, failure still teaches half).
Use an item or weapon tagged with the skill (item.skill: "Swordsmanship").
Use an ability tagged with the skill (ability.skill: "Healing").

As characters earn practice, their skill ranks increase automatically. You do not need to write hooks or scripts to level them up.

An item or weapon can declare skill: "<SkillName>". Wielding or using it trains that skill and benefits from the character's rank.
An ability can declare skill: "<SkillName>". Its damage and healing steps scale with the caster's rank.
Conditions can gate on skill rank, e.g. requiring a certain rank to attempt an action.