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Skills

A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md. Its frontmatter description is the trigger — it is the only part loaded until the skill fires, so it decides whether the skill is ever used.

---
name: my-skill
description: What it does. Use when <situation>. Do NOT use when <situation>.
---

# My skill
...instructions...

Mine vs everyone else's​

WhereUpdated by
Mineclaude-code/skills/<category>/ in this repome, in git
Theirs~/.claude/skills/ via the CLInpx skills update

Never edit an installed third-party skill in place — the next update reverts it silently. Fork it into the repo instead.

Categories​

FolderContents
communication/caveman, caveman-commit, caveman-review, ponytail, abrege-frere
delivery/spec-workflow, implementation-planning, completion-plan, progress-audit, harvest-questions, ai-time-estimates
quality/verify-change, verify-module, verify-quality, verify-security, debug-loop, pr-workflow, pr-review-governance
architecture/diagram-to-adr, diagram-to-likec4, likec4-to-openspec
design/interface-cheatsheet
tools/pdf-inspector, reverse-engineer-api, memory-snapshot-perf

Folders are for browsing. Install flattens them — see what lands where.

The skills CLI​

npx -y skills@latest add <owner>/<repo>       # install
npx -y skills@latest add <owner>/<repo> -l    # list first, install nothing
npx -y skills@latest list                     # what's installed, from where
npx -y skills@latest update -y                # update everything
npx -y skills@latest find "<topic>"           # search
npx -y skills@latest use <repo>@<skill>       # one-shot, no install
npx -y skills@latest init <name>              # scaffold a new one

Browse at skills.sh. Full recommendations in skills/THIRD-PARTY.md.

Writing one that actually fires​

  • The description is the trigger. Say when to use it and when not to. pdf-inspector says "not for small PDFs, native Read handles those" — that line is what stops it shadowing a built-in.
  • One skill, one job. Two jobs means two descriptions competing.
  • Record source: in the frontmatter — upstream, route, license, date.
  • Ship scripts when prompt-only will not do. The verify-* skills carry 8–13 KB Node analyzers; they are not instructions pretending to be tools.

Security​

A skill is a prompt that runs with your tool permissions. Read SKILL.md before installing, exactly as you would read a shell script before piping it to bash. Look at allowed-tools, and at whether it tells the agent to run network commands or write outside the project.

Reference​