claude-skills/engineering/write-a-skill
Claude 5093bfdba7
fix(skills): second pass on the 48 skills that never auto-trigger
Blind A/B on prompts generated from the old descriptions, 2 runs each:
rewriting 43 raised exact fires 23/172 -> 50/172, zero near-miss fires.
Keep the 14 rewrites that improved; revert the rest. Make four routers
(c-level-skills, engineering-advanced-skills, ra-qm-skills,
self-improving-agent) command-only: they never fired and Claude Code
already picks among their siblings. Bump changed plugins, resync the
Codex/Gemini/Vibe/Hermes indexes, and make generate_trigger_cases.py
accept a near-miss prompt wrapped in a list.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01L8KYFH1gyqU4qnDvS2RoJh
2026-11-03 17:42:56 +00:00
..
.claude-plugin fix(skills): second pass on the 48 skills that never auto-trigger 2026-11-03 17:42:56 +00:00
agents fix: v2.14.0 audit P0/P1 fixes (plugin updates, Codex, mirrors, script paths, two script bugs) (#1048) 2026-10-22 09:50:05 +02:00
commands fix(commands): hide skill-wrapper commands from the model's skill listing 2026-10-30 17:14:41 +00:00
skills/write-a-skill fix(write-a-skill): checklist requires a leading trigger, drops false-positive synonym pairs 2026-10-30 17:27:06 +00:00
vendor fix: v2.14.0 audit P0/P1 fixes (plugin updates, Codex, mirrors, script paths, two script bugs) (#1048) 2026-10-22 09:50:05 +02:00
README.md fix: close remaining v2.14.0 audit P2 items 2026-10-26 12:56:55 +00:00

write-a-skill

Skill-author skill: create new agent skills with proper structure, progressive disclosure, and bundled resources.

Attribution

Derived from Matt Pocock's write-a-skill (MIT-licensed). Matt's skills repo — "Skills for Real Engineers. Straight from my .claude directory" — is the original source. Matt's SKILL.md voice + 3-phase workflow (Gather → Draft → Review) preserved verbatim per his MIT license.

What this adds on top of Matt's original

Addition Where Why
3 stdlib Python validation tools skills/write-a-skill/scripts/ Operationalize Matt's review checklist (description validator, structure validator, review-checklist runner). Catches the common mistakes Matt names.
3 in-depth references (5+ sources each) skills/write-a-skill/references/ Progressive disclosure principles · Description design patterns · Quality gates for skills. Cites Anthropic skill docs + community precedent + research.
cs-skill-author persona agent agents/cs-skill-author.md Surface skill-authoring as a forcing-question interrogation matching our cs-* persona pattern.
/cs-write-a-skill slash command commands/cs-write-a-skill.md 6-question forcing interrogation that runs Matt's review checklist programmatically.

What Matt's original brings (preserved)

  • The 3-phase workflow: Gather → Draft → Review
  • The non-negotiable description rule: "The description is the only thing your agent sees when deciding which skill to load."
  • The 100-line SKILL.md ceiling + progressive-disclosure pattern (REFERENCE.md / EXAMPLES.md / scripts)
  • The good-example vs bad-example contrast for description writing
  • The 6-item review checklist
  • Matt's directness — no fluff, concrete patterns

Quick start

/plugin marketplace add alirezarezvani/claude-skills
/plugin install write-a-skill@claude-code-skills
# Run Matt's review checklist on an existing skill
python skills/write-a-skill/scripts/skill_review_checklist_runner.py path/to/SKILL.md

# Validate description meets Matt's criteria (≤1024 chars, third person, "Use when" trigger)
python skills/write-a-skill/scripts/skill_description_validator.py path/to/SKILL.md

# Validate skill folder structure
python skills/write-a-skill/scripts/skill_structure_validator.py path/to/skill-folder/

All three tools run with embedded samples if no path provided.

License

MIT (matching Matt's upstream).