skills-create

Skills Create — the meta-skill

A skill that authors and refactors skills. Two jobs:

• Create a new skill from scratch (or from an existing prompt/command).
• Refactor a fat skill — split detail into references/, move output shapes into templates/, trim SKILL.md down to a lean spine of pointers.

It's built the way it teaches: a lean body that defers detail to references/. That's progressive disclosure, and this skill is its own worked example. It's all composable markdown: a skill is a SKILL.md plus optional files the agent loads only when it reaches for them.

Prescribe the craft, not the content

Be strict on how a skill is built and agnostic on what any given skill — or its output — should contain.

• Prescribe (firm, universal): progressive disclosure · a third-person, trigger-rich description · an imperative, lean body · no duplication · every bundled file wired · deliberate invocation control · validation that fits the skill type. (See references/skill-standards.md.)
• Do NOT prescribe (the author's call): the sections a plan/PRD/report should have, the domain vocabulary, the output shape, which phases exist. There is no canonical output — guide the author to a good decision, never hand them a fixed one.

Strict on the craft so the author stays free on the content. (Guide, don't prescribe — and take-vs-build: you build a skill when you own the process and want it to follow YOUR way.)

Classify the skill first

Pin the type before applying the craft — the guidance is proportional, not one-size-fits-all:

A skill can blend types — apply the union of what fits. Never force a workflow's machinery (phases, loops, output skeletons) onto a knowledge skill. Full detail: references/skill-standards.md → Skill types.

Step 0 — pick the mode (from $ARGUMENTS)

Parse $ARGUMENTS to pick the mode and the target:

• Starts with create [<name>] (or is clearly a new-skill ask) → create mode; use <name> as the skill name if one was given → follow references/creating-skills.md.
• Starts with refactor <path/to/SKILL.md> (or points at an existing skill) → refactor mode on that path → follow references/refactoring-skills.md.
• Blank or unclear → ask which mode and what the skill/target is. Don't guess.

Both modes obey the same craft rules → read references/skill-standards.md first.

Create — quick spine (full detail: references/creating-skills.md)

1. Gather context — the literal phrases that should trigger it, the task start-to-finish, the gotchas, the patterns to mirror. Ask the user; don't write yet.
2. Plan the resources — what repeats → scripts/; what informs the work → references/; what shapes the output → templates/; what you don't own / changes upstream → cite a path/URL; what only exists at runtime → gather it (ask the user, read git/codebase).
3. Scaffold — copy templates/SKILL.template.md to .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md; add references/ / templates/ only as the plan needs.
4. Write the spine first — third-person trigger-rich description; imperative, lean body; push detail to references. Get it triggering before you write the references.
5. Validate & iterate — references/validation.md (checklist → trigger test → run it for real).

Refactor — quick spine (full detail: references/refactoring-skills.md)

1. Inventory the SKILL.md — mark each block spine (keep) vs extractable (output templates, schemas, long examples, exhaustive pattern/edge-case lists).
2. Extract verbatim into the target skill's references/ (or templates/ for output shapes) — don't reword anything that affects behavior.
3. Replace with a pointer — for always-needed content, a mandatory-read line ("Before producing output, read templates/<x>.md"); for sometimes-needed content, a lazy pointer.
4. Behavior-preservation check — same process, same output as before. Nothing lost, nothing duplicated.
5. Validate — references/validation.md.

The #1 refactor risk: moving an always-needed output format into a lazily-loaded reference, so the agent forgets to read it and the output silently changes. Always pair such an extraction with a mandatory-read line.

When to build a skill at all

Build one when you own a process and want the agent to follow your way of it, repeatedly — the take-vs-build rule. A rough threshold: you've prompted the same thing ~3 times (the Rule of Three) → bank it as a skill. Don't build a skill for a one-off, or for a tool whose owner already ships a good one.

Resources

• references/skill-standards.md — the craft rules: skill types, anatomy, context sources, frontmatter spec, progressive disclosure, writing voice, no-duplication, "structure implies a maintainer", wiring, portability.
• references/creating-skills.md — the full create runbook (incl. porting an existing prompt/command).
• references/refactoring-skills.md — the full split-and-trim runbook, with a before/after.
• references/validation.md — the validation gates (structure · description · body · disclosure · behavior · trigger test).
• templates/SKILL.template.md — the lean SKILL.md skeleton to scaffold from.