skill-creator

Skill Creator

About Skills

Skills are modular, self-contained folders that extend your capabilities by providing specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools. Think of them as "onboarding guides" for specific domains or tasks.

What Skills Provide

1. Specialized workflows - Multi-step procedures for specific domains
2. Tool integrations - Instructions for working with specific file formats or APIs
3. Domain expertise - Company-specific knowledge, schemas, business logic
4. Bundled resources - Scripts, references, and assets

Core Principles

Concise is Key

The context window is a public good. Skills share the context window with everything else you needs: system prompt, conversation history, other Skills' metadata, and the actual user request.

Default assumption: you are already very smart. Only add context you didn't already have and had to explore resources or use user's guidance. Challenge each piece of information: "Do you really need this explanation?" and "Does this paragraph justify its token cost?"

Prefer concise examples over verbose explanations.

Set Appropriate Degrees of Freedom

Match the level of specificity to the task's fragility and variability:

High freedom (text-based instructions): Use when multiple approaches are valid, decisions depend on context, or heuristics guide the approach.

Medium freedom (pseudocode or scripts with parameters): Use when a preferred pattern exists, some variation is acceptable, or configuration affects behavior.

Low freedom (specific scripts, few parameters): Use when operations are fragile and error-prone, consistency is critical, or a specific sequence must be followed.

Think of you as exploring a path: a narrow bridge with cliffs needs specific guardrails (low freedom), while an open field allows many routes (high freedom).

Anatomy of a Skill

Every skill consists of a required SKILL.md file and optional bundled resources:

~/.agents/skills/<skill-name>/
├── SKILL.md (required)
│   ├── YAML front matter metadata (required)
│   │   ├── name: (required)
│   │   └── description: (required)
│   └── Markdown instructions (required)
└── Bundled Resources (optional)
    ├── scripts/          - Executable code (Python/Bash/etc.)
    ├── references/       - Documentation intended to be loaded into context as needed
    └── assets/           - Files used in output (templates, icons, fonts, etc.)