Workflow To Skill

Workflow To Skill

Use this skill when a repeated workflow should become an installable skill instead of living as a one-off prompt.

Workflow

1. Identify the trigger: when should the skill activate?
2. Identify the user outcome: what should the agent produce?
3. Remove generic advice the model already knows.
4. Keep the main SKILL.md concise.
5. Move long examples or reference material into references/ only if needed.
6. Add scripts only when deterministic execution matters.
7. Include output formats that make success easy to recognize.
8. Add guardrails for risky decisions.

Skill Skeleton

---
name: skill-name
description: Use when ...
---

# Skill Name

## When To Use

## Workflow

## Output Format

## Guardrails

Quality Checklist

• The description includes the real trigger phrases and task types.
• The body is short enough to load often.
• The skill gives degrees of freedom instead of forcing one brittle path.
• The output format matches the user's next action.
• The skill avoids unrelated documentation files inside the skill folder.
• The examples are realistic, not toy prompts.

Anti-Patterns

• A skill that is just a long prompt.
• A skill that explains concepts the model already knows.
• A skill that silently changes secrets, credentials, git history, or production systems.
• A skill with ten outputs when the user needs one decision.

Context

This is a meta-skill. Use it at any point in the pipeline when a repeated workflow should become an installable skill instead of a one-off prompt.