1. Introduction
Among all Chinese-developed large models, ByteDance is an outlier.
Unlike other large models that compete for attention with grand fanfare, it operates much more low-key and under the radar.
However, it actually has the largest range of ongoing projects: large models, Agents, development tools, and cloud services all have independent brands. It has a footprint everywhere, is missing nothing, and all projects are advancing at high speed.
Seed is ByteDance's large model team, with multiple product lines under it. The recently extremely popular video model Seedance 2.0 is their product.
Today, I will write a Skill tutorial using ByteDance's full suite — the newly released Seed 2.0 model and development tool TRAE.
You will see that combined, they are powerful, simple to use, and (for individual users) completely free. That is why I wanted to write this article, to let everyone know about this solution.
After just 10 minutes reading this tutorial, you will also understand what Skill is, how to use it, and why you should start using it.
2. Introduction to Seed 2.0
First, let's introduce Seed 2.0: it is the base model of the Seed family.
The so-called "base model" (foundation model) is a general-purpose large model, that can be used to build various other downstream models. It has two core characteristics: one is large scale, and the other is strong generalization ability, which makes it convenient to build other models on top of it.
Doubao, the well-known ByteDance AI chatbot, is based on the Seed model, which is also referred to as the "Doubao Large Model". This release of Seed 2.0 includes three general-purpose models: Pro, Lite, and Mini, as well as the Seed 2.0 Code model customized specifically for developers.
Since it must support all kinds of use cases, Seed 2.0's general versatility is particularly outstanding, stronger than all previous versions.
1. Supports multimodal processing, can handle all types of data: text, charts, visual space, motion, video, and more.
2. Has a full range of Agent capabilities, making it easy to integrate with enterprise tools: search, function calling, tool calling, multi-turn instructions, context management, and more.
3. Has strong reasoning and code capabilities.
It is precisely because of this last point that we can use it for programming, especially front-end code generation. When used together with ByteDance's AI programming tool TRAE, the effect is excellent. It is extremely convenient for full-stack development, and it is free for individual users.
3. Preparations for TRAE
After you download and install TRAE, it has two modes you can switch between in the top-left corner: IDE mode and SOLO mode.
Just select IDE mode; SOLO is an orchestrator for AI tasks, and you won't need it unless you are running multiple tasks at once.
Next, press the shortcut Ctrl + U (or Command + U) to bring up the dialog box for chatting with the AI.
Since we are building a web application, select the @Builder development mode in the top-left corner. For the model in the bottom-right corner, select Seed-2.0-Code.
As you can see, TRAE comes with a full set of open-source Chinese-developed programming models, all free to use.
That completes the preparations.
4. Programming Test
I chose a somewhat challenging task for Seed 2.0 to generate.
ASCII art is graphics drawn using characters, as shown in the example below.
I want to generate a web application where users can input ASCII art on a webpage, and it is automatically converted to a hand-drawn graphic in Excalidraw style.
The prompt I used is as follows:
"Generate a web application that can convert ASCII art into an image in Excalidraw style, and provide a download function."
The model then starts reasoning, and decomposes this task into four steps.
5. Generation Result
After Seed 2.0 finishes generating the code, TRAE will spin up a local server at localhost:8080 and open a preview window at the same time.
The generation result is quite interesting. The ASCII input box at the top provides four examples: Box, Tree, Flowchart, Smiley. Below is what the Tree example looks like.
Next is the control panel for Excalidraw parameters: line width, roughness, curvature, and font size.
Click the Convert button, and you immediately get a hand-drawn style line graphic.
The entire page looks like this.
6. Introduction to Skill
The design of this page is not very aesthetically pleasing, and can be improved. I plan to add a dedicated front-end design Skill to Seed 2.0, so it can create more beautiful pages.
A Skill is a purpose-built prompt used to inject context into the model.
Sometimes prompts are very long, and typing them every time is a hassle. We can extract the frequently reused parts and save them in a file for easy repeated use. These extracted prompts are often detailed descriptions of how to complete a specific type of task, so they are called "skill files".
In terms of format, it is just a Markdown text file with a YAML header containing a `name` field and a `description` field.
The `name` field is the name of the Skill, which is how you call the skill; the `description` field is a brief description of the skill, and the model uses this description to determine when to automatically call the skill.
Some skills are more complex: in addition to the description file, they also have dedicated script files, resource files, template files, etc., essentially forming a complete code repository.
Among these files, SKILL.md is the entry file, and the model uses its description to understand when and where to call all other files.
This repository can be published online and shared with others. If you think an AI model needs a specific skill to handle a task, you can find a pre-written Skill created by others and load it into the model.
7. Front-end Design Skill
Next, I will use the front-end design skill shared by Anthropic to refactor the page we created earlier. It is just a single Markdown file that you can download.
Open TRAE's "Settings/Rules and Skills" page.
Click the "+ Create" button in the Skills section to open the create skill window.
You can fill in the Skill content in this window, or upload an existing Skill file. I chose to upload, and after completion, you can see that the frontend-design skill already appears in the list.
Next, I used the following prompt to invoke this skill to refactor the page.
"Use the frontend-design skill to refactor this page, making it more beautiful, easier to use, and more professional."
Below is the text description and refactoring result provided by the model.
The page really does look much more polished and professional now!
8. Vercel Deploy Skill
Finally, let's look at another example of a Skill.
After the code is generated, it only runs on your local machine. Can we publish it online to share with more people?
The answer is yes: just use Vercel's deploy skill, and you can publish the generation result to Vercel's servers with a single command.
Go to the GitHub repository of Vercel's official skills, and download the zip file of the Vercel-deploy skill.
Then, drag this zip file into TRAE's skill window, and it will be automatically loaded.
Enter the prompt: "Publish the generated website to Vercel".
The model will then execute the vercel-deploy skill, publish the website to Vercel, and finally output two links: one is a preview link, and the other is the link published to your personal account.
You can now visit this link to see the actual effect of the website.
9. Summary
If you have read this far, you will likely agree with me that Seed 2.0 has quite strong programming capabilities, and when paired with its own programming tool TRAE, it is both easy to use and free.
Skill is a powerful capability extension mechanism that makes the model almost omnipotent, and you should definitely learn how to use it.
(End)
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- Copyright Statement: Free reproduction - Non-commercial - No derivatives - Attribution ( Creative Commons 3.0 License )
- Publication Date: February 14, 2026
This is a discussion topic separated from the original thread at http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2026/02/seed-2.0.html