Skill Creator

This skill provides guidance for creating effective skills.

About Skills

Skills are modular, self-contained packages that extend Claude’s capabilities by providing specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools.

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 for complex tasks

Skill Structure

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md (required)
│   ├── YAML frontmatter metadata (required)
│   │   ├── name: (required)
│   │   └── description: (required)
│   └── Markdown instructions (required)
└── Bundled Resources (optional)
    ├── scripts/          - Executable code
    ├── references/       - Documentation
    └── assets/           - Files used in output

Core Principles

Concise is Key

Only add context Claude doesn’t already have. Challenge each piece of information: “Does Claude really need this explanation?”

Set Appropriate Degrees of Freedom

• High freedom: Use when multiple approaches are valid
• Medium freedom: Use when a preferred pattern exists
• Low freedom: Use when operations are fragile and error-prone

Skill Creation Process

1. Understand the skill with concrete examples
2. Plan reusable skill contents (scripts, references, assets)
3. Initialize the skill (run init_skill.py)
4. Edit the skill (implement resources and write SKILL.md)
5. Package the skill (run package_skill.py)
6. Iterate based on real usage