Optimizing Skills

Use this skill to create, review, or improve SKILL.md-based skills so they trigger correctly, stay concise, and execute reliably.

When to Use

• Creating a new reusable skill from repeated work patterns.
• Updating an existing skill that under-triggers, over-triggers, or misfires.
• Tightening a skill that is too long, redundant, or hard to execute.
• Converting narrative guidance into concise, imperative instructions.
• Rebalancing where content should live across SKILL.md, references/, assets/, and scripts/.

Overview

What is a Skill?

A skill is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools, typically classed as procedural knowledge or best practices. Skills help future Agent instances find and apply effective approaches.

Skills are: Reusable techniques, patterns, tools, reference guides

Skills are NOT: Narratives about how you solved a problem once

When to Create a Skill

Create when:

• Technique wasn’t intuitively obvious to you or required multiple iterations to get right.
• You’d reference this again across projects / Others would benefit from knowing this.
• Pattern applies broadly (not project-specific)
• Triggerable by specific user intents or common failure modes.

Don’t create for:

• One-off solutions
• Standard practices well-documented elsewhere
• Project-specific conventions that aren’t broadly applicable

Workflow

1. Define trigger tests: list 2-3 prompts that should trigger the skill and 2 that should not.
2. Audit frontmatter: keep only name and description; make description when-focused, not workflow-focused.
3. Rewrite the body in imperative form: keep main instructions short, specific, and ordered by execution.
4. Move deep detail out of SKILL.md into references/, assets/, or scripts/; link to each from SKILL.md.
5. Validate workflow representation: use markdown for linear steps; use a small DOT flowchart only for non-obvious branching or loops.
6. Run trigger and functional checks against real prompts; iterate until both pass.

Core Principles

• Optimize for triggering: description must emphasize when to use the skill (references/skills-search-optimization.md).
• Keep frontmatter metadata small (about 100 tokens combined).
• Keep main SKILL.md under 500 lines and focused on action.
• Use progressive disclosure: metadata -> SKILL.md -> references/scripts/assets.
• Choose the right degree of freedom: text, pseudocode, or scripts depending on fragility.
• Prefer reusable resources (scripts, templates) over repeated prose.

Progressive Disclosure Targets

• Metadata (name + description): small startup footprint, ideally ~100 tokens.
• SKILL.md: keep actionable and concise, target <5000 tokens and <500 lines.
• scripts/, references/, assets/: loaded only when needed; keep files narrow so agents pull less context.

Flowchart Guidance

digraph when_flowchart {
    "Need to show process guidance?" [shape=diamond];
    "Non-obvious decision or loop?" [shape=diamond];
    "Use markdown (list/table/code)" [shape=box];
    "Use small inline DOT flowchart" [shape=box];

    "Need to show process guidance?" -> "Non-obvious decision or loop?" [label="yes"];
    "Need to show process guidance?" -> "Use markdown (list/table/code)" [label="no"];
    "Non-obvious decision or loop?" -> "Use small inline DOT flowchart" [label="yes"];
    "Non-obvious decision or loop?" -> "Use markdown (list/table/code)" [label="no"];
}

• Use markdown lists/tables/code blocks by default.
• Add DOT only when decision logic or loops are easy to misapply.
• Avoid placeholder node labels; use concrete actions and conditions.
• Follow references/graphviz-conventions.dot for node shapes and labels.
• Keep flowcharts small and trigger-based; split large flows into focused subgraphs.

Render DOT to SVG with scripts/render-dot.py. Output SVGs are written to the target skill’s assets/ directory.

scripts/render-dot.py skills/optimize-skills/references/skill-workflow.dot
scripts/render-dot.py skills/optimize-skills/SKILL.md
scripts/render-dot.py skills/optimize-skills/SKILL.md --force # overwrite existing SVGs

Output

SKILL.md Structure

skills/
  skill-name/
    SKILL.md      # Main reference (required)
    assets/       # (optional) Static reusable resources such as templates or figures
    references/   # (optional) On-demand documentation, organized by topic or variant
    scripts/      # (optional) Executable helpers for deterministic tasks;
                  # scripts should be self-contained or clearly declare dependencies,
                  # include clear errors, and handle edge cases.

Rules

• SKILL.md must be named exactly SKILL.md.
• Folder name must be kebab-case, matching the name in frontmatter.
• Do not add README.md inside the skill.
• YAML frontmatter must include name and description fields.
• name must be kebab-case and match the folder name.
• description should emphasize when to use the skill and include triggers/symptoms.
• Avoid workflow summaries in the description.
• Keep descriptions short and specific.
• Refer to assets/skill-template.md for a suggested (but easily modified) template structure.

Common Mistakes

• Summarizing workflow in description instead of stating actionable triggers and symptoms.
• Keeping workflows as one giant graph instead of splitting into trigger-based subgraphs.
• Repeating deep reference material in SKILL.md instead of linking to references/.
• Leaving scripts implicit: deterministic steps should be executable where possible.

References

• assets/skill-template.md for a suggested SKILL.md structure.
• references/best-practices.md: checklists, structure guidance, testing, and troubleshooting patterns.
• references/skills-search-optimization.md: description and trigger optimization rules.
• references/skill-workflow.dot: canonical workflow for this skill.
• references/graphviz-conventions.dot: DOT style and semantics for workflow diagrams.