New Skill

new-skill — author a SKILL.md the right way

You are creating a portable skill for this repo. A skill is prompt + I/O contract, not an agent: it owns no state. Provider-neutral by rule — the body must read the same to Claude Code, to a custom SkillRegistry loader, or to a bare LLM that gets the body injected as context. Do not name host-specific tools.

The one rule that decides everything: the description IS the trigger

A skill is selected because its description sits in context (level-1) and the model matches the user's request against it. So write the description as a "use when …" statement, not a "this does X" statement.

• Weak (describes WHAT): Checks documentation consistency.
• Strong (describes WHEN + WHAT): `Use when you changed an env var / port / tool

/ dependency and are preparing a PR — verifies every coupled artifact moved.`

Embed concrete trigger phrases, in every language the users speak, when the skill is user-invoked (e.g. "разбери инбокс" / "help me clarify my inbox").

Two kinds of skill — pick the selection mechanism first

1. Intent skill (triggers: []): selected by an LLM classifier over the

description. The description is load-bearing — invest in "use when".

1. Trigger skill (triggers: [some.kind]): selected by a deterministic

string match on an event kind, no LLM. Here the triggers: list IS the "use when"; the description is documentation only. Do not add "use when" phrasing to a trigger skill — it is never read for selection.

Keep the body lean (progressive disclosure)

Only the description is always in context. The body loads when the skill runs. So: put the trigger surface in the description; put the full procedure in the body; push long reference material into sibling files the body links to and the agent opens on demand. A bloated body is a tax paid on every invocation.

Procedure

1. Name: short kebab-case verb-or-noun, unique in the repo.
2. Frontmatter (see shape below). Write the description last, as "use

when …", and read it back asking "from this line alone, would I know to reach for this skill?"

1. Body: the numbered procedure the agent follows. Reference .skills/change-map.yaml

or other repo config rather than hard-coding project specifics — that is what keeps the skill portable.

1. Index: add a one-line entry to SKILLS-INDEX.md (name — one-line "use when").
2. Coupling: if the skill introduces a new coupled artifact, add it to the

consuming repo's .skills/change-map.yaml so check-drift covers it.

1. Verify triggering: state 2-3 example user requests that SHOULD fire it and

1-2 that should NOT. If a skill-eval tool is available, run it; otherwise keep these examples in the body as a manual triggering contract.

Frontmatter shape

---
name: 
description: >
  Use when . 
version: 0.1.0
category: 
# triggers: [event.kind]   # ONLY for deterministic trigger skills; omit for intent skills
---

Required by the Anthropic spec (all a stock loader reads): name, description. version + category are this repo's own convention metadata (provenance + grouping for SKILLS-INDEX.md) — keep them. Beyond those, do not add frontmatter that nothing reads — simplicity over completeness.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: fedoroff-vlad
• Source: fedoroff-vlad/agent-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.