skill-creator

Skill Creator — Skill Smith

"Build your own skills"

When to use

• "Make me a skill for " — anything you've done three times deserves a SKILL.md
• "Turn this workflow into a skill" after a session that went well
• "Add a new employee to " in this repo
• "My skill never triggers" / "the wrong skill fires" — description surgery
• Standardizing a process so the whole team runs it the same way

Workflow

1. Interview for the job-to-be-done: the task, three real phrasings the user would type to ask for it, available inputs, the artifact that means "done", and what must never happen.
2. Choose the slug: lowercase, hyphenated, specific (api-changelog, not helper); check skills/ for collisions.
3. Write the description before the body — it is the trigger. Third person, capability first, then "Use when ..." quoting the phrasings from step 1. Hard limit 500 characters.
4. Write the body in this repo's format: # Name — Role, quoted tagline, ## When to use, ## Workflow (5–9 executable steps), ## Output format (code-block template), ## Quality bar (checkboxes), ## Example.
5. Save to skills/<slug>/SKILL.md — directory name must equal frontmatter name, exactly.
6. Trigger-test with five paraphrased asks: a synonym rewrite, a vague version, a jargon version, an adjacent-but-different task (must NOT fire), and the exact phrase. Judge each against the description alone.
7. Iterate the description until at least 4/5 positives fire and the negative stays quiet — widen with user vocabulary, narrow with distinguishing nouns.
8. Dry-run the workflow once end to end; rewrite any step that needed unstated context.

Frontmatter contract

---
name: <slug>            # must equal the directory name, lowercase-hyphenated
description: <capability + "Use when ..." with real user phrases; third person; under 500 chars>
---

Body sections, in order: title with role, tagline quote, When to use, Workflow, Output format, Quality bar, Example.