Create Skill

Skill Creation Guide

Reference for creating skills that follow the Anthropic skill standard (github.com/anthropics/skills).

Skill Anatomy

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md (required)
│   ├── YAML frontmatter (name, description required)
│   └── Markdown instructions ( --role  --description "" --tags ""

Valid roles: pm, engineer, qa, designer, content-creator, devops, shared, leadership, program-delivery-manager, customer-success, recruiter, consultant, sales, marketing, founder, data-scientist, data-engineer, security

This creates skills/by-role///SKILL.md and adds an entry to skills.json. Always scaffold first, then write the SKILL.md content.

After writing, validate:

python3 scripts/validate_skill.py

Placeholders (for this repo)

When creating skills for the claude-skills public repo, replace all personal/project references:

| Context | Placeholder | |---------|------------| | Personal name | [your name] | | Newsletter or blog | [your newsletter] | | Website domain | [your-domain] | | Professional niche | [your niche] | | Subject area | [your topic] | | Target audience | [your audience] | | Company name | [your company] | | Team name | [your team] | | Client name | [your client] | | Customer name | [customer name] | | Program or project | [your program] |

Creation Checklist

Before finalizing any skill:

• [ ] Scaffolded with init_skill.py (creates folder + registers in skills.json)
• [ ] YAML frontmatter has name and description
• [ ] Description is pushy with multiple trigger phrases
• [ ] Body is under 500 lines
• [ ] Overview names the book or methodology the skill is grounded in
• [ ] Workflow has clear numbered steps with ### Step N: headings
• [ ] Anti-patterns section exists with Bad/Good pairs
• [ ] Quality checklist exists
• [ ] Directives explain "why", not just "what"
• [ ] Examples are concrete and specific
• [ ] No personal/project-specific content (if for public repo)
• [ ] Placeholder brackets used for any context-specific references
• [ ] Overflow content moved to references/ with clear pointers
• [ ] python3 scripts/validate_skill.py passes

Source & license

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

• Author: qa-aman
• Source: qa-aman/claude-skills
• License: MIT

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