Skill Creation Guide

Skill Creation Guide

Help the user author effective agent skills — single SKILL.md files (in the open Agent Skills format) that auto-trigger by context and provide specialized guidance. The format is shared across hosts (Claude Code, Cursor, and others); only the install location differs.

This skill covers three things: deciding whether a skill is worth creating, discovering candidates from the user's work, and generating a well-formed skill.

BE SKEPTICAL

Not every idea makes a good skill. Evaluate before creating:

Recurrence — Will this be used repeatedly?

• ✅ Weekly or more → create
• ⚠️ Monthly → reconsider, may not be worth it
• ❌ One-time → skip

Automation — Can it actually be automated?

• ✅ Clear, repeatable process → create
• ⚠️ Needs significant judgment each time → reconsider
• ❌ Too context-dependent, each case unique → skip

Value — Is the cumulative time saved significant?

• ✅ Meaningful savings per use → create
• ❌ Slower to invoke than doing manually → skip

Duplication — Does it already exist?

• ✅ Novel, unaddressed need → create
• ⚠️ Similar to an existing skill → enhance that instead
• ❌ Already covered → skip

Don't create skills for one-time events, tasks that differ fundamentally each time, sub-30-second manual tasks, or things the user will forget exist.

Workflow A — Discover opportunities

When the user asks what they should automate, analyze their work patterns first.

Requires the Glean MCP tools. If they aren't visible, ask the user to set up Glean by prompting the harness (for example, Set up Glean for me).

1. Gather context with Glean: memory (roles, responsibilities, active projects), user_activity (past ~2 weeks), and search for process docs ("runbook OR checklist OR process owner:me").
2. Spawn the work-pattern-analyzer agent to identify repeated queries, frequent contexts, workflow sequences, and manual processes — and to vet each candidate against the recurrence/value tests above.
3. Present vetted recommendations grouped by cumulative value, and show the rejected candidates with reasons. A few high-quality candidates beat many weak ones — "no automatable patterns" is a valid outcome.

See using-glean/reference/ for the param shape of memory, user_activity, and search.

Workflow B — Generate a skill

When the user wants to create a specific skill:

1. Clarify (only what isn't already clear): purpose, trigger conditions, tools it uses, and output format.
2. Spawn the skill-generator agent with the concept, requirements, and available-tools context. It returns a complete SKILL.md — or declines, with reasons, if the idea fails the skepticism tests.
3. Offer to save it to the user's host skills directory, or display it for review. Confirm the path and the trigger phrases that will activate it.

SKILL.md structure

---
name: skill-name-in-kebab-case
description: When this skill triggers — specific phrases, contexts, and use cases. Fold trigger phrases into this field; keep it thorough but under ~200 words.
---

# Skill Title

Brief overview of what this skill does.

## When This Applies
- Condition / trigger phrases

## Main Content
[The workflow, guidance, or instructions — imperative form]

## Output Format (optional)
[Template for what the skill produces]

Best practices

1. Specific triggers. "Use when reviewing pull requests, or when the user says 'review this PR' / 'check my code'" beats "use for code review."
2. Progressive disclosure. Essential action first; detail and edge cases below. Push deep, load-on-demand material into reference/*.md.
3. Actionable, imperative content. "Search for X", not "Searches for X."
4. Name the tools the skill uses (e.g. Glean search, memory; or Grep, Read).
5. Stay host-agnostic. Don't hard-code one host's slash-command syntax or install paths; describe the capability and let each host resolve it.

Where to save

Skills live in the host's skills directory — e.g. ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ (personal) or .claude/skills/<name>/ (project) for Claude Code, the equivalent location for other hosts, or skills/<name>/ when authoring for a plugin library like this repo.

Related skills

• work-pattern-analyzer / skill-generator agents back the two workflows above.