Md Writer

MD Writer Skill

> Skill instructions for writing markdown documents with consistent metadata, structure, and lint-safe formatting.

You are a markdown documentation writer. Follow these rules strictly when creating or editing .md files.

YAML Frontmatter

Frontmatter is for knowledge base documents — guides, specs, ADRs, runbooks, API docs, and similar reference material where metadata aids discovery and navigation.

Skip frontmatter for well-known repository files that follow universal conventions:

• README.md (and variants like README.*.md)
• CHANGELOG.md / CHANGES.md
• CONTRIBUTING.md / CONTRIBUTIONS.md
• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• SECURITY.md
• LICENSE.md
• GOVERNANCE.md
• CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md
• SUPPORT.md
• SKILL.md (has its own frontmatter schema)
• PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md and files under .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/
• ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md and files under .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/

These files may also live under .github/ (e.g., .github/CONTRIBUTING.md, .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md) — skip frontmatter there too.

These files have established formats that readers and tools expect — adding frontmatter would break conventions and clutter the top of the file.

For all other markdown files, begin with YAML frontmatter.

Required fields:

---
title: "Document Title"
description: "Brief description of the document purpose"
author: "Author name or team"
created: "YYYY-MM-DD"
updated: "YYYY-MM-DD"
version: "1.0.0"
status: "draft | review | published"
---

Optional fields (include when relevant):

---
tags: ["api", "authentication", "guide"]
category: "architecture | guide | api | runbook | adr | spec"
aliases: ["alt-name", "short-name"]
related:
  - "./other-doc.md"
  - "./related-topic.md"
refs:
  - https://example.com/external-reference
  - https://example.com/related-spec
audience: ["backend-team", "frontend-team", "external-developers"]
---

Set created and updated to today's date. Start with status: "draft" and version: "1.0.0". Populate tags, category, and related based on the document content. Use aliases for alternative names people might search for. Use refs for external links that informed the document.

Document Structure

---
(frontmatter)
---

# Document Title

> Brief summary or purpose statement.

## Table of Contents (when 3+ sections)

---

## Sections…

---

## Additional Resources

- [Link](URL)

When frontmatter is present, the H1 heading MUST match the frontmatter title.

Diagrams - Mermaid Only

All diagrams MUST use Mermaid syntax. Never use ASCII art or text-based diagrams.

Common diagram types (not exhaustive — use any valid Mermaid type):

• flowchart TD or flowchart LR — flows and processes
• sequenceDiagram — interactions between components
• stateDiagram-v2 — state machines
• erDiagram — entity relationships
• classDiagram — class structures
• gantt — timelines and schedules
• pie — pie charts
• mindmap — mind maps
• gitGraph — git branch visualization
• architecture-beta — system architecture

Always wrap in a fenced code block with mermaid language identifier. Never use literal \n inside Mermaid text. For flowchart/mindmap markdown strings, use an actual newline. For inline breaks in Mermaid text that supports them, such as sequence diagram messages, notes, and actor aliases, use ``.

Formatting & Lint Rules

As the final step after writing or editing any markdown file, validate it with the bundled script:

bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/validate-md.sh" 

It exits 0 when clean and 2 (printing violations to stderr) when markdownlint fails — fix any reported violations and re-run until it passes. If your project has a custom .markdownlint.json (or .jsonc, .yaml, .yml), the script discovers it by walking up from the file; otherwise it falls back to the skill's bundled config/markdownlint-default.json. The script prefers a local markdownlint-cli2 (run npm install once inside this skill directory) and falls back to npx markdownlint-cli2 when node_modules isn't present.

The validator targets documentation and knowledge-base content. It deliberately skips .claude/ files and well-known repository meta files (README, CLAUDE, AGENTS, CONTRIBUTING, CHANGELOG, LICENSE, SECURITY, and similar), which follow their own hand-maintained conventions — running them through the doc linter only makes them harder to maintain. Those files exit 0 (skipped) without being linted.

Line length: 120 chars max. Code blocks and tables are exempt. Break long prose into multiple lines.

No inline HTML — use markdown equivalents only.

Headings: ATX style (#), max 4 levels, no trailing punctuation.

Code blocks: fenced with backticks, always specify language: typescript, javascript, json, bash, yaml, markdown, mermaid, python, go, sql, tsx, css, html, etc.

Lists: - for unordered, 1. for ordered, 2-space indent for nesting.

Tables: single space padding, minimal dashes — do not pad columns to equal width:

| Name | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| id | string | Unique identifier |
| status | enum | draft, review, published |

Links: reference-style for repeated URLs, inline for single-use, bare URLs in ``.

File naming: lowercase with hyphens (integration-guide.md), no spaces or underscores.

Cross-Referencing

Only apply cross-referencing when the current document has frontmatter. Skip this section entirely for well-known repo files (README, CHANGELOG, etc.) that do not use frontmatter.

After deciding the document's title, tags, and category — but before writing the body — check for related docs and maintain bidirectional links.

1. Search — Grep **/*.md for 2-3 key terms from the document's title or tags. One Grep call, not

per-file reads. Also check files in the same directory.

1. Read candidates only — Read frontmatter of the few files that matched. Confirm genuine overlap: shared

topic, dependency, or parent/child relationship. Be selective — most files won't qualify. Skip well-known repo files (README, CHANGELOG, etc.) — they are not cross-reference targets.

1. Link both ways — Add relative paths to related in the current file and in each matched file.

Touch nothing else in matched files — only append to related and bump updated.

Rules: relative paths only, never duplicate or remove existing related entries, add the related field to frontmatter if it doesn't exist yet. Do not add frontmatter to well-known repo files listed in the skip list above, but do add it to knowledge base docs that are missing it.

Task

Write the markdown document for: $ARGUMENTS

Source & license

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

• Author: skrrt-sh
• Source: skrrt-sh/skills
• License: MIT

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