Agent Skill Design

Agent Skill Design

Use this skill to create practical, portable agent skills from repeated workflows or domain reference material.

Workflow

1. Define one job for the skill. If the description needs multiple unrelated "and" clauses, split it.
2. Write trigger metadata as the routing interface: clear name and description with positive use cases.
3. Keep SKILL.md procedural and short. Move detailed docs into references/, deterministic helpers into scripts/, and reusable output material into assets/.
4. Read references/day3_agent_skills.txt when deciding packaging, progressive disclosure, evaluation, or anti-patterns.
5. Validate with at least three prompts:
   • should trigger
   • should trigger with a realistic edge case
   • should not trigger
6. Iterate on the description before adding more body text.

Review Criteria

• One clear job
• Good trigger description
• Minimal body
• References loaded only when needed
• No bulky background prose in SKILL.md
• Concrete validation prompts
• No duplicate information between SKILL.md and references

Evaluation Prompts

• Positive: "Turn this recurring workflow into a Codex skill." Expected: scoped skill design with trigger, workflow, references/scripts/assets choice, and eval prompts.
• Positive edge: "This whitepaper has useful agent ideas; extract practical skills." Expected: avoid source dump, create operating references and validation prompts.
• Negative: "Use an existing skill to edit this file." Expected: no skill-design work unless the skill itself is being created or changed.