skill-creation-guide
Guide the user through creating a new Claude Code skill — SKILL.md format, frontmatter, progressive disclosure, when to use reference files, common pitfalls.
What this skill does
# Skill Creation Guide This guide helps you create effective Claude Code skills. ## When This Applies Use this guide when you want to: - Create a new skill for yourself or a plugin - Understand SKILL.md format and structure - Learn skill development best practices - Convert a repeated workflow into a skill ## BE SKEPTICAL Not every idea makes a good skill. Before creating one, evaluate: **Recurrence Test** - Will this be used repeatedly? - ✅ CREATE: Weekly or more frequent use - ⚠️ RECONSIDER: Monthly use - may not be worth it - ❌ SKIP: One-time need - don't create a skill **Automation Test** - Can this actually be automated? - ✅ CREATE: Clear, repeatable process - ⚠️ RECONSIDER: Requires significant judgment each time - ❌ SKIP: Too context-dependent, each case is unique **Value Test** - Is the cumulative time savings significant? - ✅ CREATE: Saves meaningful time per use - ⚠️ RECONSIDER: Marginal time savings - ❌ SKIP: Takes longer to invoke than doing manually **Duplication Test** - Does this already exist? - ✅ CREATE: Novel approach to an unaddressed need - ⚠️ RECONSIDER: Similar to existing skill - maybe enhance instead - ❌ SKIP: Already covered by existing skill or command **Don't create skills for**: - One-time organizational events (team mergers, annual planning) - Tasks that are fundamentally different each time - Simple tasks that take <30 seconds manually - Things you'll forget exist and never invoke ## What is a Skill? A skill is a markdown file that teaches Claude how to handle specific situations. Skills auto-trigger based on context and provide specialized guidance. ## Quick Start The fastest way to create a skill: ```bash # Discover opportunities from your work patterns /glean-skills:discover # Create a skill from a description /glean-skills:create <skill-name> ``` ## SKILL.md Structure ```yaml --- name: skill-name-in-kebab-case description: When this skill triggers. Be specific about phrases, contexts, and use cases. --- ``` ```markdown # Skill Title Brief overview of what this skill does. ## When This Applies - Condition 1 - Condition 2 - Example phrases that trigger this ## Main Content [The actual guidance, workflow, or instructions] ## Output Format (optional) [Template for what the skill produces] ``` ## Best Practices ### 1. Specific Triggers Bad: "Use for code review" Good: "Use when reviewing pull requests, checking code quality, or when user says 'review this PR', 'check my code', or 'code review'" ### 2. Progressive Disclosure Start with the essential action, add details as sections: 1. Quick summary at the top 2. Detailed steps in the middle 3. Edge cases and examples at the bottom ### 3. Actionable Content Use imperative form: - "Search for X" not "Searches for X" - "Check the following" not "The following should be checked" ### 4. Reference Available Tools Name the tools the skill uses: - Glean tools: `search`, `memory`, `user_activity` - Code tools: `Grep`, `Glob`, `Read` - Workflow tools: `Task`, `AskUserQuestion` ## Where to Save Skills | Location | Use Case | |----------|----------| | `~/.claude/skills/` | Personal skills (your machine only) | | `.claude/skills/` | Project skills (shared with team) | | `plugins/*/skills/` | Plugin skills (distributed with plugin) | ## Related Commands - `/glean-skills:discover` - Find skill opportunities from your work patterns - `/glean-skills:create <name>` - Generate a SKILL.md from a description
Related in AI Agents
skill-development
IncludedComprehensive meta-skill for creating, managing, validating, auditing, and distributing Claude Code skills and slash commands (unified in v2.1.3+). Provides skill templates, creation workflows, validation patterns, audit checklists, naming conventions, YAML frontmatter guidance, progressive disclosure examples, and best practices lookup. Use when creating new skills, validating existing skills, auditing skill quality, understanding skill architecture, needing skill templates, learning about YAML frontmatter requirements, progressive disclosure patterns, tool restrictions (allowed-tools), skill composition, skill naming conventions, troubleshooting skill activation issues, creating custom slash commands, configuring command frontmatter, using command arguments ($ARGUMENTS, $1, $2), bash execution in commands, file references in commands, command namespacing, plugin commands, MCP slash commands, Skill tool configuration, or deciding between skills vs slash commands. Delegates to docs-management skill for official documentation.
reprompter
IncludedTransform messy prompts into well-structured, effective prompts — single or multi-agent. Use when: "reprompt", "reprompt this", "clean up this prompt", "structure my prompt", rough text needing XML tags and best practices, "reprompter teams", "repromptception", "run with quality", "smart run", "smart agents", multi-agent tasks, audits, parallel work, anything going to agent teams. Don't use when: simple Q&A, pure chat, immediate execution-only tasks. See "Don't Use When" section for details. Outputs: Structured XML/Markdown prompt, quality score (before/after), optional team brief + per-agent sub-prompts, agent team output files. Success criteria: Single mode quality score ≥ 7/10; Repromptception per-agent prompt quality score 8+/10; all required sections present, actionable and specific.
adaptive-compaction
IncludedAdaptive add-on policy and recovery layer that decides WHEN to compact, prune, snapshot, or fork -- replacing fixed-percent auto-compaction across Claude Code, Codex, and MCP-capable hosts. Trigger on auto-compact timing or damage: "when should I compact", "is it safe to compact now or start a fresh session", "auto-compact fires too early/mid-task", "switching to an unrelated task but the window still has space", "context rot", "answers get worse the longer the session runs", "the agent forgot the plan or my decisions after it summarized", "add a layer on top that manages context without changing the agent", raising autoCompactWindow to give the policy room, or installing/tuning a cross-tool compaction policy or PreCompact hook -- even when "compaction" is never said but the problem is context-window pressure or post-summarization memory loss. Do NOT use to summarize a conversation, build RAG, write a summarization prompt (decides WHEN not HOW), or answer max-context-length trivia.
agent-skill-creator
IncludedCreate cross-platform agent skills from workflow descriptions. Activates when users ask to create an agent, automate a repetitive workflow, create a custom skill, or need advanced agent creation. Triggers on phrases like create agent for, automate workflow, create skill for, every day I have to, daily I need to, turn process into agent, need to automate, create a cross-platform skill, validate this skill, export this skill, migrate this skill. Supports single skills, multi-agent suites, transcript processing, template-based creation, interactive configuration, cross-platform export, and spec validation.
llm-wiki
IncludedUse when building or maintaining a persistent personal knowledge base (second brain) in Obsidian where an LLM incrementally ingests sources, updates entity/concept pages, maintains cross-references, and keeps a synthesis current. Triggers include "second brain", "Obsidian wiki", "personal knowledge management", "ingest this paper/article/book", "build a research wiki", "compound knowledge", "Memex", or whenever the user wants knowledge to accumulate across sessions instead of being re-derived by RAG on every query.
skill-master
IncludedAgent Skills authoring, evaluation, and optimization. Create, edit, validate, benchmark, and improve skills following the agentskills.io specification. Use when designing SKILL.md files, structuring skill folders (references, scripts, assets), ingesting external documentation into skills, running trigger evals, benchmarking skill quality, optimizing descriptions, or performing blind A/B comparisons. Keywords: agentskills.io, SKILL.md, skill authoring, eval, benchmark, trigger optimization.