Jartan-LLC Claude Configuration Primitives
Three distinct purposes in .claude/. Each has a clear job -- never conflate them.
Agents are their own file type. Commands and skills are both SKILL.md files,
told apart by who is allowed to invoke them.
Agents = Roles
An agent defines who you are. It shapes focus, identity, and constraints for a subagent.
- Role identity ("You are a senior backend reviewer")
- Tool and permission constraints
- What the agent cares about (evaluation criteria, output format, confidence thresholds)
- Runs in an isolated subagent context
Agents are not workflows. They define a lens for approaching work, not steps to follow. A backend-reviewer says "you care about async correctness and session handling" -- not "Step 1: read the diff."
Good: Role identity, focus areas, evaluation criteria, output format, what to read for context. Bad: Step-by-step procedures, bash scripts, workflow orchestration.
Skills = Context and Knowledge
A skill defines what you know. It provides conventions, recommendations, how-tos, and reference material.
- Reference knowledge ("Here's how migrations work in this project")
- Conventions ("Module files follow this structure")
- Recommendations ("When writing docs, prefer tables over prose")
- Templates and examples when they're the core value
Skills are not workflows. They provide knowledge for good decision-making.
A skill MAY include a sequence when it's critical reference -- but as illustrative guidance, not a script to execute.
Declare user-invocable: false. Claude loads a skill when it's relevant; the user never reaches for it by name.
Good: Conventions, patterns, templates, recommendations, how-tos, reference material. Bad: Rigid step-by-step procedures, orchestration logic, state management.
Commands = Workflows
A command defines what to do. An explicit, purposeful sequence with a clear trigger.
- Specific workflow with clear start and end
- Defines what happens in what order
- Has a trigger (
/command-name) and expected output - May include specific commands to run, but skills inform the how
Commands are workflows. They define what to do; skills inform how to do each step well.
Set neither invocation field. disable-model-invocation: true makes an unprefixed /name a dead end: it autocompletes, then falls through to the model, and that same flag blocks the model from running it.
Write a command as skills/<name>/SKILL.md. Claude Code has folded commands into skills: the older commands/<name>.md still resolves to the same /<name>, but it cannot carry supporting files.
Good: Step sequences, action triggers, workflow orchestration, expected outcomes. Bad: General knowledge, conventions, recommendations unrelated to the workflow.
Who Can Invoke
Two frontmatter fields decide this:
| Frontmatter | Invoked by | Use for |
|---|---|---|
user-invocable: false |
Claude, when relevant | Knowledge -- conventions, patterns, reference |
disable-model-invocation: true |
The user, via /plugin:name |
Rare -- a workflow that must never start unbidden |
| Neither | Claude and the user | Workflows -- ordered steps with a clear outcome |
Knowledge sets user-invocable: false, which keeps a / menu from filling with reference material nobody meant to invoke. Workflows set neither.
disable-model-invocation: true also blocks preloading into subagents via an agent's skills: frontmatter -- never put it on knowledge an agent depends on.
How They Interact
- Commands trigger action, skills provide context, agents provide specialized focus
- Commands may invoke agents as part of their workflow
- Agents may preload skills for additional project context
Naming
- Agents answer "who is this?" --
backend-reviewer,issue-planner - Skills answer "what does this teach?" --
logging-patterns,github-conventions - Commands answer "what does this do?" --
plan-issue,review-pr
Naming should be predictable within a category but not forced into a single suffix.
Testing the Distinction
- Defines a role identity? -> Agent
- Executes a sequence of actions? -> Command
- Provides knowledge or recommendations? -> Skill
If a file does two of these, split it.
Other Agent Tools
Codex reads SKILL.md and ignores frontmatter it doesn't know, so skills and commands
both load there. It honours neither invocation field -- every skill is invocable as
$name. Treat a clean / menu as a Claude Code guarantee, not a portable one.
Workspace
.claude/workspace/ is the conventional path for working documents -- plans, research, scratch files. Skills and commands that need to write intermediate files should use this directory.