The Forge

Skill Creator

Bootstraps a new skill inside this repo so it matches the project's conventions and passes validation on the first try.

When to use

The user says something like "add a skill that…", "create a new skill", "scaffold a SKILL.md", or "I want to contribute a skill here".

Steps

1. Clarify the skill. Ask for (or infer), in this order:

• The purpose: what it does and — crucially — when it should trigger

(the concrete situations/phrases). This drives the description. Nail this FIRST — the name is derived from it.

• The name. From the purpose/goal, invent 3-5 evocative names in the

spirit of superpowers or special-move names (e.g. shadow-clone, kamehameha, falcon-punch, mind-meld) and propose them for the user to pick from. Lean on the skill's domain for the metaphor (cleanup → spring-clean/purge; search → all-seeing-eye; scaffolding → genesis). Each candidate MUST still be valid kebab-case ([a-z0-9-]+), since it becomes the folder name, the name frontmatter, AND the invoke command /loop-skills:. Always also offer a plain functional fallback (gerund form, e.g. reviewing-prs) for when the user prefers a literal name, and let them request a fresh batch. Because discovery is driven by the description (not the name), a fanciful name does NOT hurt auto-triggering — but keep the catalog row's one-line description crystal-clear so the skill stays findable.

• Whether it needs references/ (long docs) and/or scripts/ (helper code).
• Prerequisites & secrets — which CLIs/tools the skill calls (e.g. gh,

jq, trufflehog) and which credentials / env-var keys it needs (e.g. GITHUB_TOKEN). These drive the skill's own Setup section, so it can self-guide its setup on first run. Detect these from the skill's purpose; don't make the user configure things a different skill needs.

1. Research prior art on the web (required). Before writing anything, search

the web for existing skills/tools/approaches that solve the same problem — Anthropic's official skills (anthropics/skills), community plugin marketplaces, awesome-claude-* lists, and comparable non-Claude tools. Use WebSearch/WebFetch. Then report to the user a short synthesis covering:

• Gaps — capabilities the existing solutions miss that this skill should cover.
• Better approach — proven patterns worth adopting instead of reinventing.
• Novelty / quality / rarity — how common or valuable this idea is, and an

honest recommendation: build it, build a differentiated version, or just point the user at an existing solution (and skip creating a near-duplicate). Let the user steer based on this before scaffolding. Capture the prior-art summary so it can go into the PR description (see [SCOPE.md](../../../../SCOPE.md)).

1. Create the folder under the plugin:

plugins/loop-skills/skills//

1. Generate SKILL.md from the template at

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/assets/SKILL.template.md. Replace the placeholders:

• {{SKILL_NAME}} → the kebab-case name
• {{DESCRIPTION}} → a description that states **what it does AND when to use

it**, leading with the key use case and naming trigger phrases (this is the ONLY discovery signal — be specific, even "pushy").

• {{BODY}} → the standing instructions (keep the whole file `).
• Refresh the plugin's keywords/description in

plugins/loop-skills/.claude-plugin/plugin.json and the plugin entry in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json if the new skill adds a notable capability, so search/discovery reflect it.

• Note: in this repo all skills live in the single loop-skills plugin, so

marketplace.json lists plugins, not skills — it does NOT get a new entry per skill. Updating the catalog + keywords IS the marketplace update. (Only if you ever split a skill into its own separate plugin would you add a new plugins[] entry here.)

1. Validate before finishing:

``bash bash scripts/validate-skills.sh # structure + manifests (no auth) claude plugin validate . # official validator (if CLI available) ` Fix any error the linter reports (missing name/description, non-kebab-case folder, invalid manifest). Warnings (e.g. missing version`) are acceptable.

1. Tell the user how to load it: from a local install, /reload-plugins

picks up the new skill; from a GitHub install, push then /plugin marketplace update.

Conventions to enforce

• kebab-case names (fanciful superpower / special-move names encouraged, still

[a-z0-9-]+); one folder per skill; folder name == name.

• Lean SKILL.md; detail in references/, code in scripts/.
• No version in manifests (ship by commit SHA).
• See [CONTRIBUTING.md](../../../../CONTRIBUTING.md) for the full contributor flow.

Source & license

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

• Author: simoneloop
• Source: simoneloop/skills
• License: MIT

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