Skill Name
Provide a clear, concise description of what this skill covers and when to use it. This description appears in skill discovery and should help agents (and humans) determine when this skill is relevant.
Important: Keep the total SKILL.md body under 500 lines for optimal performance. Move detailed reference material to separate files in the references/ directory.
Every skill body must make its ownership boundary explicit. The description and When to Activate section should say what the skill owns and which adjacent skills own nearby work. This prevents broad skills from stealing activation from narrower skills.
When to Activate
Describe specific situations, tasks, or contexts where this skill should be activated. Include both direct triggers (specific keywords or task types) and indirect signals (broader patterns that indicate skill relevance).
Write in third person. The description is injected into the system prompt, and inconsistent point-of-view can cause discovery problems.
- Good: "Processes Excel files and generates reports"
- Avoid: "I can help you process Excel files"
Include a short "Do not activate" block for adjacent skills. Example:
- Do not activate for project-level pipeline shape:
project-development. - Do not activate for individual tool schema design:
tool-design.
Core Concepts
Explain the fundamental concepts covered by this skill. These are the mental models, principles, or frameworks that the skill teaches.
Default assumption: Claude is already very smart. Only add context Claude does not already have. Challenge each piece of information:
- "Does Claude really need this explanation?"
- "Can I assume Claude knows this?"
- "Does this paragraph justify its token cost?"
Prefer behavior-changing mechanisms over general background. If a concept should be reusable across the corpus, add or update a record in researcher/mechanisms/registry.jsonl.
Detailed Topics
Topic 1
Provide detailed explanation of the first major topic. Include specific techniques, patterns, or approaches. Use examples to illustrate concepts.
Topic 2
Provide detailed explanation of the second major topic. Continue with additional topics as needed.
For longer topics, consider moving content to references/ and linking:
- See detailed reference for complete implementation
Practical Guidance
Provide actionable guidance for applying the skill. Include common patterns, anti-patterns to avoid, and decision frameworks for choosing between approaches.
Match the level of specificity to the task's fragility:
- High freedom: Multiple approaches are valid, decisions depend on context
- Medium freedom: Preferred pattern exists, some variation acceptable
- Low freedom: Operations are fragile, specific sequence must be followed
Practical guidance should be executable by an agent: a workflow, checklist, decision table, or concrete operating rule. If a section only explains history or motivation, move it to references/.
Examples
Provide concrete examples that illustrate skill application. Examples should show before/after comparisons, demonstrate correct usage, or show how to handle edge cases.
Use input/output pairs for clarity:
Example:
Input: [describe input] Output: [show expected output]
Guidelines
List specific guidelines to follow when applying this skill. These should be actionable rules that can be checked or verified.
- Guideline one with specific, verifiable criteria
- Guideline two with clear success conditions
- Continue as needed
Gotchas
List experience-derived failure modes, common mistakes, and counterintuitive behaviors. These are the highest-signal content in any skill. Each gotcha should be specific, actionable, and non-overlapping with guidance already in the skill body. Use numbered format:
- Short descriptive title: One to two sentences explaining what goes wrong and how to prevent it.
- Another gotcha title: Description of the failure mode and what to do instead.
Integration
Explain how this skill integrates with other skills in the collection. List related skills as plain text (not links) to avoid cross-directory reference issues:
- skill-name-one - Brief description of relationship
- skill-name-two - Brief description of relationship
References
Internal reference (use relative path to skill's own reference files):
- Reference Name - Description
Related skills in this collection:
- skill-name - Relationship description
External resources:
- Research papers, documentation, or guides
Numeric, benchmark, volatile, or vendor-performance claims need an inline claim-* ID backed by researcher/claims/index.jsonl, or they should be softened and moved to dated reference material.
Skill Metadata
Created: [Date] Last Updated: [Date] Author: [Author or Attribution] Version: [Version number]
