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DanaResearchGroupDanaResearchGroup/agent-skills/writing-great-skills/SKILL.md

writing-great-skills

Skill1 starsChanged 3 months agoMITView on GitHub

Use when authoring, editing, reviewing, or shrinking a skill in this repo — its frontmatter, description, or the model-invoked vs user-invoked choice. Wraps writing-for-agents with this repo's skill conventions.

104 other projects use a version of this.

Adopted by

Most recently taken up by

Used with

Projects with it also use decision-mapping, batch-grill-me and 9 more.

Other files people use alongside this one.

Files found in the same public projects as a version of this one, more often than they turn up anywhere else. Each project counts once, large collections count for less, and this file's own repository is left out.
  • FabienDehopreSkill

    decision-mapping

    Turn a loose idea into a sequenced map of investigation tickets, then drive them to resolution one at a time.

    Also in 7 projects that use this

  • boyingliu01Skill

    batch-grill-me

    A relentless interview that asks every frontier question at once, round by round. Thin alias of `grilling` (#540) — upstream mattpocock/skills absorbed this protocol into grilling; XP-Gate keeps this name as the sprint-flow Phase 2 entry point so orchestration docs stay stable.

    Also in 7 projects that use this

  • simo97Skill

    edit-article

    The user will invoke this skill to help them edit an article.

    Also in 18 projects that use this

  • simo97Skill

    request-refactor-plan

    Use this skill when user wants to create a refactor plan.

    Also in 17 projects that use this

  • RoentekSkill

    loop-me

    Grill me about specs for the workflows I want to build, within this workspace.

    Also in 19 projects that use this

  • LesaniSkill

    writing-shape

    Take a markdown file of raw material and shape it into an article through a conversational session — drafting candidate openings, growing the piece paragraph by paragraph, arguing about format (lists, tables, callouts, quotes) at each step. Use when the user has a pile of notes, fragments, or a rough draft and wants help turning it into something publishable.

    Also in 20 projects that use this

  • +2 more from simo97

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

1 rule. 0 are common, 0 are distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.

  • 0

    Common

    Most of the 97 edited versions we read keep these.

  • 0

    Distinctive

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 1

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Very specific:

    Lint gate: Every skill must pass bin/lint-skills.py.

    line 12

“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 97 edited versions of this file we could read. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Authoring or editing a skill? The general craft — information hierarchy, progressive disclosure, completion criteria, pruning, leading words, the failure modes, and the model-invoked vs user-invoked mechanics — lives in writing-for-agents and its SKILL-MECHANICS.md. Read those first: a skill is just one kind of agent-read document, and predictability — the agent taking the same process every run — is the root virtue there too.

This skill adds only what is specific to a skill living in this repo.

In this repo

  • Lint gate. Every skill must pass bin/lint-skills.py; run it before you commit.
  • Flat layout. Skills are top-level <name>/ directories here, not nested under skills/{engineering,productivity,personal}/ the way upstream ships them.
  • Vendored vs ours. Skills vendored from Matt Pocock are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Editing one creates drift the next /sync-matt-pocock-skills must reconcile, so keep local edits minimal and record any deep adaptation in ADAPTATION.md. A skill that is ours stays out of both.
  • Invocation default. Default to model-invoked, so the agent and other skills can reach it; set disable-model-invocation: true only for a skill fired solely by hand, and route a pile-up of those through a user-invoked router. Group-internal skills that carry personal context live in a separate private repo, not here.
  • Count badge. Adding or removing a skill changes the README skills-N badge; update it in the same change.

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What did you use it for? e.g. Reviewing pull requests in a Rails app

Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.

Your trail

Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.

Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.

Now do this for your own.

Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.

Check your setup, free