Script Best Practices

Script Best Practices

Guidelines for bundling executable scripts in skills.

When to Bundle Scripts

Bundle scripts when:

• Same code would be rewritten repeatedly
• Deterministic reliability needed
• Complex validation required
• Token cost of generation exceeds execution cost

Error Handling

Always handle errors explicitly rather than punting to Claude:

# Good: Handle errors explicitly
def process(path):
    try:
        with open(path) as f:
            return f.read()
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print(f"Creating {path}")
        with open(path, 'w') as f:
            f.write('')
        return ''
    except PermissionError:
        print(f"ERROR: Cannot access {path} - check permissions")
        return None

# Bad: Let errors propagate unexpectedly
def process(path):
    with open(path) as f:
        return f.read()  # Will crash on missing file

Document Constants

Every magic number needs rationale:

# Good: Document constants
TIMEOUT = 30  # HTTP requests typically complete in 30s
MAX_RETRIES = 3  # Most failures resolve by second retry
BATCH_SIZE = 100  # Balance between memory and API calls

# Bad: Magic numbers
TIMEOUT = 47  # Why 47?
MAX_RETRIES = 3  # Why 3?

Clarify Intent in SKILL.md

Be explicit about how scripts should be used:

Execute the script:

Run `scripts/analyze.py` to extract form fields from the PDF.

Read as reference:

See `scripts/analyze.py` for the extraction algorithm (do not run directly).

Script Organization

skill-name/
  SKILL.md
  scripts/
    analyze.py      # Main entry point
    validate.py     # Validation utilities
    helpers/        # Shared utilities
      formatting.py
      parsing.py

Dependencies

Always list dependencies explicitly:

## Requirements

Before running scripts:
```bash
pip install pdfplumber python-docx

Or with the provided requirements file:

pip install -r scripts/requirements.txt

## Exit Codes

Use consistent exit codes:

```python
import sys

EXIT_SUCCESS = 0
EXIT_INVALID_INPUT = 1
EXIT_FILE_NOT_FOUND = 2
EXIT_PERMISSION_ERROR = 3

def main():
    if not validate_input():
        sys.exit(EXIT_INVALID_INPUT)
    # ... process ...
    sys.exit(EXIT_SUCCESS)

Output Formatting

Make output parseable:

# Good: Structured output
import json

result = {
    "status": "success",
    "files_processed": 5,
    "errors": []
}
print(json.dumps(result))

# Bad: Unstructured output
print("Done! Processed 5 files with no errors.")

Idempotency

Scripts should be safe to run multiple times:

def ensure_directory(path):
    """Create directory if it doesn't exist (idempotent)."""
    os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)

def write_if_changed(path, content):
    """Only write if content differs (idempotent)."""
    if os.path.exists(path):
        with open(path) as f:
            if f.read() == content:
                return False  # No change needed
    with open(path, 'w') as f:
        f.write(content)
    return True