Suno

Variables

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Purpose

Suno is an AI music platform; the prompt is the instrument. This skill helps the user generate, refine, and debug Suno prompts, both the style/genre and lyrics fields, using v5.5-era best practices, the documented tag taxonomy, and community-validated performance tricks.

The skill is a prompt-craft assistant, not an audio generator. Suno produces audio; this skill makes sure the prompt going INTO Suno is sharp, on-format, free of common pitfalls.

Suno v5.5 (released March 26, 2026; verified 2026-07-18 against https://suno.com/blog/v5-5) preserved v5's prompt syntax but improved adherence to nuanced descriptors and added three personalization layers (Voices, Custom Models, My Taste). Everything below targets v5.5 unless noted; legacy v4 (~200-char style prompt) is out of scope.

Deprecation horizon: Suno and Warner Music Group committed to launching licensed models in 2026 and deprecating the current models when those launch; they announced no date. Re-check Suno's release notes before relying on v5.5-specific behavior. Source: joint WMG/Suno announcement, 2025-11-25.

Action Router

Parse $ARGUMENTS: first token = action, remainder = args. If empty (e.g. model-invoked from a natural-language request), infer the action from conversation context; show this menu only when no actionable context exists.

If the action is unknown, show this table and ask what the user wants.

Load-bearing fundamentals (inline. Every action assumes these)

The 6-layer formula (style prompt ordering)

Order matters. Early tags carry more weight. Front-load genre.

1. Genre / subgenre. Specific, not "pop" → synth-pop, 80s-inspired
2. Mood. 2-3 words → nostalgic, hopeful (not 9 conflicting moods)
3. Instrumentation. Specific → fingerpicked acoustic guitar (not just "guitar")
4. Vocal direction. Acoustic descriptors → breathy, intimate, slight rasp (not "amazing")
5. BPM. Numeric → 128 BPM (not "fast")
6. Production. polished mix, lo-fi tape hiss, compressed and aggressive

Sweet spot: 5–8 distinct tags. Fewer than 4 → generic. More than 10 → conflicting signals.

Character budgets

Verified 2026-07-18. No official Suno page states field limits; figures are third-party tester consensus (hookgenius character limits, aimusicapi cheat sheet, 2026-07-03).

Recheck trigger: hookgenius or the aimusicapi cheat sheet revises the character-limit figures above, or an official Suno page states style-prompt / lyrics / title limits directly. Not a date.

The lyrics field is a SECOND style channel

Power users treat the lyrics field as more than words to sing. Per-section style overrides in lyrics control instrumentation, dynamics, and production section-by-section. Something the global style prompt can't do.

[Verse: piano only, no drums, intimate]
First narrative beat...
The vocals carry the weight...

[Pre-Chorus: drums enter, building]
Tension rising...
Tension rising...

[Chorus: full band kicks in, distorted guitar lead, gang vocals]
THE HOOK
THE HOOK

[Bridge: stripped to vocals + acoustic, dry mix]
Most vulnerable moment...

[Chorus: bigger than before, double-tracked vocals, layered harmonies]
THE HOOK

Two separator syntaxes work. Both on the same [Tag] line:

• [Verse: descriptor, descriptor]. Colon + comma list
• [Bridge | dark | introspective | sparse]. Pipe-separated

Keep modifiers short (2-4 words each). Match section to tone. "explosive drop" only makes sense on [Drop], not [Intro].

This solves the dynamics problem, without it, every section sounds the same density. With it, you can build verse-chorus contrast, strip the bridge, blow up the final chorus.

Worked example (synth-pop)

Style prompt:

synth-pop, 80s-inspired, nostalgic and hopeful,
shimmering analog synths, warm Moog bass, punchy drum machine,
ethereal female vocals with reverb tail, 95 BPM,
polished radio-ready production, no autotune

Lyrics (skeleton):

[Intro]
[Verse 1]
First narrative beat, present tense, concrete imagery...

[Pre-Chorus]
Building tension, single-line repetition encouraged

[Chorus]
The HOOK — peak energy, full instrumentation
Repeat the title or core phrase

[Verse 2]
Second narrative beat, contrast or escalation

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Contrast section — often a key change or stripped-back

[Chorus]
[Outro]
[End]

The no X syntax works for negative prompts: no autotune, no reverb wash. Grouping negatives at the end is a readability convention, not a verified adherence rule. The Exclude field in Custom mode's Advanced Options is the structural alternative.

Anti-patterns (always flag these in clean action)

Custom mode is required for tag syntax

Simple mode = unified prompt + auto-lyrics. Custom mode = separate fields (style, lyrics, title) + Advanced Options + tag syntax + Creative Sliders. Any time the user wants [Verse]/[Chorus]/[Female Vocal]-style tags, they must be in Custom mode. See context/advanced.md.

How to handle each action

prompt <intent>. Build both style and lyrics. Read context/style.md for layer detail, context/lyrics.md for tag taxonomy. Produce two fenced blocks (style, lyrics), each labeled, within budget. End with 2-3 tweak suggestions.

lyrics <intent>. Load context/lyrics.md. Output a tagged lyrics block with section structure ([Verse 1], [Chorus], etc.). Include 1-2 performance cues (parentheticals, ellipses) where they fit naturally. Stay ≤3,000 chars, the quality sweet spot; the hard cap is 5,000, unless user asked for max.

style <intent>. Load context/style.md. Walk the 6-layer formula. Output one fenced style-prompt block + character count. Suggest 2-3 alternatives (different mood, different production).

clean <text>. Load context/troubleshoot.md and context/style.md. Score the user's prompt against the anti-pattern table above. Surface flagged issues with specific quotes. Propose a rewrite. Do NOT silently rewrite. State what changed and why in your response.

tags. Load context/lyrics.md. Render the full taxonomy as tables (structural, vocal, instrument, mood, ending). Include parameterized syntax [Tag: descriptors] example.

genre <name>. 4-mode router. Detect intent from arguments:

1. Template mode. <name> matches one of the 12 built-in templates (pop, rock, hip-hop, trap, edm, jazz, classical, folk, metal, ambient, lofi, rnb): read templates/.md and present.

2. Research mode. <name> is a real genre but no template exists (e.g., dungeon synth, witch house, gqom, phonk, slowcore, vaporwave, nu-disco):

   • Check context/genre-taxonomy.md first, if cataloged, build a Suno prompt from the catalog entry
   • If not cataloged, invoke the research action's Phase 1 (WebFetch / Perplexity) to fetch BPM range, instrumentation, vocal style, production character
   • Synthesize into the standard template format: style prompt block + lyrics shell + 3 tweak knobs + 2-3 common variants
   • Cite sources

3. Suggest mode. <name> starts with suggest (e.g., genre suggest dark moody chill, genre suggest dystopian aggressive) OR is a vibe phrase rather than a genre name:

   • Read context/genre-taxonomy.md "Vibe → genre mapping" section
   • Return 3-7 fitting genres, each with: 1-line distinguishing characteristic + the right BPM/key/instrumentation hints + which template to load OR which research target to chase
   • Ask user which one to expand into a full prompt

4. Family mode. <name> starts with family (e.g., genre family hip-hop, genre family electronic):

   • Read context/genre-taxonomy.md family tree
   • Show the requested family's subgenres in tree form
   • Brief 1-line characteristic per subgenre
   • Ask user which leaf to expand

If <name> is ambiguous (could be template OR research OR suggest), ask user which mode they want.

troubleshoot <symptom>. Load context/troubleshoot.md. Match the symptom to a known failure mode. Give diagnosis + 1-3 specific fixes + a regenerate-with-this prompt rewrite if applicable.

tips. Load context/tips.md. Surface community-validated techniques (caps for vocal pressure, vowel stretching for melisma, ellipses for breath, parentheticals for inline directives, hyphenation for staccato, line breaks for melodic separation). Caveat: MEDIUM-confidence, consensus across multiple community sources but no official Suno doc, except where an entry flags itself lower: the timing-cue entry is LOW-MEDIUM.

features. Load context/v55-features.md (what's new in v5.5) and/or context/advanced.md (modes, Personas, Cover, Extend, Replace Section, Stems, Sliders, Studio). Pick the section the user asked about. Don't dump everything.

Confidence flags (be honest about source quality)

• HIGH confidence: claims confirmed by Suno's official help center (help.suno.com) or suno.com/blog. The 6-layer formula, structural and vocal tag names, Custom mode requirements, Voices/Custom Models/My Taste mechanics, and Creative Slider names and qualitative endpoints, all HIGH. Character budgets are NOT officially published, third-party tester consensus only (MEDIUM-HIGH).
• MEDIUM confidence: community-validated techniques across multiple guides + Reddit consensus, but no official Suno doc. Capitalization weighting magnitude, vowel-stretching letter counts, hyphenation staccato, (x2) failure mode, and every numeric Creative Slider setting or range in this skill except the Audio Influence entry value are community-empirical. Treat exact magnitudes and slider numbers as starting points for A/B tests, not official values.
• LOW-MEDIUM confidence: below MEDIUM because the multi-source consensus is missing. At most a single community post plus its own comment thread, and no official Suno doc. Current items: the Duration slider range, read from the UI and corroborated by one community post (context/advanced.md); the two-stage voice bootstrap for non-singers and the "make this voice public" toggle warning, both resting on a single r/SunoAI post (context/voices.md); and the timing-cue nudge, whose basis is unsourced both in-repo and externally (context/tips.md). Offer these as untested leads carrying their own caveat, never as procedure, and never in place of a better-supported route when one exists.
• OFF the ladder. First-hand writer observation. Every rung above grades second-hand sourcing: official docs, multiple community guides, a single community post. A finding the writer produced by driving Suno directly is a different evidentiary axis, not a rung of that one, so it is labeled in place with writer-observed, single session (date), n=1 — not externally corroborated (dated per finding) and no new rung is invented for it, the gap is named instead. First-hand does not outrank MEDIUM: one unreproduced session is not consensus, and where the reading is flow-scoped or setup-scoped the label must carry that scope with it. But an observed failure is existence evidence in a way a claimed success is not: it shows the failure can happen, which is enough to document a fix, and never enough to assert that it always happens or to state a mechanism. Surface these with the label and scope attached, and prefer the cheap safe default over the clever shape whenever one exists. Current items: the Audio Influence entry value (context/advanced.md), and tag-only section absorption plus short-line over-separation (both context/troubleshoot.md). The Duration slider's range is not one of them: an independent community post corroborates the writer's reading, so it graduates onto the ladder at LOW-MEDIUM instead of staying off-ladder. A first-hand observation that finds external support graduates onto the ladder; it does not keep the off-ladder label as a badge.

When generating prompts, default to HIGH-confidence techniques. Surface MEDIUM-confidence tricks as opt-in suggestions, not commands. Surface LOW-MEDIUM items only with their caveat attached, and only after naming the better-supported route. Surface off-ladder writer observations with their label and their scope attached, and when one records a failure, give the safe default as the fix rather than a prohibition.

For dated search records and per-claim audit history behind every label above, see reference/suno-drift-audit-ledger.md.

Maintenance. Load on demand

Nothing below is needed to write a prompt. It is the maintainer surface for this skill's own claims.

What this skill does NOT do

• Generate audio. Suno does that. This skill produces text prompts.
• Cover legacy v4 prompting, the ~200-char style-prompt era is out of scope. Targets v5.5.
• Make commercial-use determinations. Cover and Voices have commercial constraints noted in context/advanced.md; treat as informational, not legal advice.
• Replace Suno's web UI workflow. This is a prompt-craft assistant. Workflow steps requiring clicks in Suno's UI (Replace Section, Persona creation, Voice verification) are described, not automated.
• Fix already-generated audio. Suno's prompt is a generation-time control. Most issues (hallucinated lyrics, vocal artifacts, BPM drift) are prevention-only. The skill's troubleshoot action gives the prompt-side fix, then asks the user to regenerate.