doca-caps

Where to start: This is a tool skill for invoking doca_caps, a side-effect-free CLI. Open TASKS.md and start at ## run for the documented invocations, or ## test when using doca_caps as an install smoke-test. Open CAPABILITIES.md when the question is what kinds of capability families doca_caps reports. If DOCA is not installed yet, route to doca-setup first.

Example questions this skill answers well

The CLASSES of doca_caps questions this skill is built to answer, each with one worked example. The class is the load-bearing piece; the worked example is one instance.

• "What DOCA devices does this host see?" — worked example: "is my BlueField PF visible to DOCA". Answered by the device enumeration in CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes
  • the --list-devs invocation in TASKS.md ## run.
• "Which DOCA libraries are available on this OS?" — worked example: "is Flow available on my RHEL host". Answered by the library-availability surface in CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes
  • the library-listing invocation in TASKS.md ## run.
• "Does this device support library X capability Y?" — worked example: "does this device support Flow hairpin?". Answered by the per-device per-library capability matrix in CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes
  • the --pci-addr-scoped invocation in TASKS.md ## run.
• "What representors are visible to DOCA?" — worked example: "enumerate VF representors for pf0". Answered by the representor enumeration in CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes
  • the --list-rep-devs invocation in TASKS.md ## run.
• "I want a snapshot of state to attach to my debug session." — worked example: "save device + library + capability output to a file". Answered by the snapshot workflow in TASKS.md ## test and consumed by doca-debug ## test step 3 (read-only triple) and doca-programming-guide ## debug.
• "doca_caps returned nothing for capability Y — what does that mean?" — worked example: "empty output for RDMA". Answered by the empty-output interpretation rules in TASKS.md ## debug + CAPABILITIES.md ## Error taxonomy.

Audience

This skill serves external operators, developers, and AI agents who need a side-effect-free way to ask "what does DOCA see on this host?" before doing anything that changes state. Concretely:

• An external developer who installed DOCA (or is using the public NGC DOCA container per doca-setup ## no-install) and wants to confirm the install can see hardware before writing code.
• A platform operator deploying a DOCA service who wants a documented, read-only snapshot of which DOCA libraries this host actually supports and which capabilities each DOCA device offers.
• An AI agent producing a capability snapshot artifact during the documented setup or programming-guide debug procedures (it's listed as the canonical first step in doca-setup ## test and doca-programming-guide ## debug).

It is not for users debugging doca_caps itself, and not a substitute for the live public Capabilities Print Tool guide.

doca_caps is shipped as a tool (a single CLI binary), not a library you link against. The skill uses the same kind: tool three-file shape as the rest of the bundle so the agent's task-verb contract (configure / build / modify / run / test / debug) is uniform across libraries, services, and tools — even when individual verbs collapse to a routing stub for a shipped read-only binary.

When to load this skill

Load this skill when the user is — or the agent needs to — invoke doca_caps on a real host with DOCA installed (or inside the public NGC DOCA container). Concretely:

• Running doca_caps --list-devs to enumerate DOCA devices.
• Running doca_caps --list-rep-devs to enumerate representor devices.
• Scoping output to a specific PCIe address with --pci-addr.
• Listing the DOCA libraries the install reports as available on the current OS.
• Listing the available DOCA logger names.
• Capturing a documented, side-effect-free capability snapshot as prerequisite evidence for later ## debug workflows.

Do not load this skill for general DOCA orientation, library API work, or installation. For those, use doca-public-knowledge-map, the matching libs/<library> skill, or doca-setup.

What this skill provides

This is a thin loader. Substantive material lives in two companion files:

• CAPABILITIES.md — what doca_caps reports (the five documented capability families: devices, representors, libraries, library capabilities, loggers), version availability and execution environment, the tool's narrow error surface, its observability role inside other skills' workflows, and its read-only safety posture.
• TASKS.md — step-by-step workflows for the in-scope task verbs: configure (route to install), build (route to install), modify (refuse), run (the documented invocations), test (capability snapshot as install smoke-test), debug (what to do when the tool reports nothing or fails), plus a Deferred task verbs block routing out-of-scope questions.

The skill assumes a host where DOCA is already installed (or the public NGC DOCA container is running) and the operator has whatever permissions the public guide requires for doca_caps to enumerate devices on their platform.

What this skill deliberately does not ship

This skill is agent guidance, not a samples or scripts bundle. To keep the boundary clean, it deliberately does not contain — and pull requests should not add:

• Pre-baked example output. Output is install- and hardware-specific. A captured example pinned to one platform and one DOCA version misleads operators on a different platform / version.
• Wrappers, parsers, or scripts in any language that consume doca_caps output. The output format is documented; if a user wants to script against it, the right answer is "read the live guide, write the parser against your installed version".
• A samples/ or reference/ subtree. This is a thin loader for a documented CLI; substantive material lives on the public page and in --help.

Loading order

1. Read this SKILL.md first to confirm the user's question is in scope (the user actually wants to invoke doca_caps, not learn about DOCA in general).
2. For what doca_caps reports, version availability, error surface, and safety posture, see CAPABILITIES.md.
3. For the documented invocations and the capability-snapshot workflow — configure, build, modify, run, test, debug — see TASKS.md.

Related skills

• doca-public-knowledge-map — routing to the public Capabilities Print Tool guide and the rest of the public DOCA documentation set.
• doca-setup — env preparation, install verification (doca_caps is the canonical first step there), and the I have no install yet path with the public NGC DOCA container.
• doca-programming-guide — cross-library programming patterns, including the ## debug procedure where the saved doca_caps snapshot is consumed.
• The matching libs/<library> skill — for fine-grained, library-specific capability questions that go beyond what doca_caps exposes.