Agent Skills

Contributor guide for this skills library when working in Claude Code. The marketplace name is dgalarza-agent-skills. The GitHub repository is dgalarza/agent-skills. It was renamed from dgalarza/claude-code-workflows. Do not create a repository with the old name, because that breaks GitHub's redirect.

Architecture and the reasons for the layout are in ARCHITECTURE.md. AGENTS.md is the same guide for other agents.

Repository Structure

skills/<name>/
  SKILL.md                    # Canonical skill (required)
  scripts/                    # Executable code (optional)
  references/                 # Docs loaded into context as needed (optional)
  assets/                     # Templates and files used in output (optional)
plugins/<plugin-name>/
  .claude-plugin/plugin.json  # Thin manifest: name, version, description, author
  README.md                   # User-facing plugin docs
  skills/<name>               # Symlink to ../../../skills/<name>
  tests/                      # Tests of that plugin's templates, when present
.claude-plugin/marketplace.json
.agents/skills/               # Vendored skill-creator used by CI. Not a published skill

Claude Code plugins are codebase-readiness, agent-ready, and engineering-skills. herdr-code-review (an engineering skill outside the bundle) and the operator utility buffer stay under skills/ and are installed with npx skills only.

Symlinks stay inside this repository. Claude Code dereferences a symlink whose target is another directory in the same marketplace and copies that content into the plugin cache.

Key Conventions

• Plugin versions live in plugins/<name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json and in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json (the plugin entry and the marketplace version). Keep them in sync.
• Versions use calendar versioning: YYYY.MM.PATCH (this consolidation is 2026.10.0). Increment PATCH for later changes in the same month.
• SKILL.md frontmatter requires name (kebab-case, max 64 characters) and description (max 1024 characters, no angle brackets).
• Skill instructions use imperative or infinitive form.
• Skill steps that can run in parallel must also say what to do when the runtime has no subagents.
• JSON files must be valid. CI checks this.
• Commit messages follow conventional commits: feat:, fix:, chore:, docs:.

Development Workflow

1. Add or edit the skill under skills/<name>/.
2. For a Claude plugin, point plugins/<plugin>/skills/<name> at ../../../skills/<name> and list the plugin in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json.
3. Validate locally: python3 .agents/skills/skill-creator/scripts/quick_validate.py skills/<name>
4. CI validates skills and JSON on pull requests.
5. Bump the CalVer version in both plugin.json and marketplace.json before merging behavior changes.

Releasing

Git tags for the marketplace snapshot stay YYYY.MM.DD. If more than one tag lands on the same day, append a suffix: YYYY.MM.DD.2. Plugin and marketplace versions stay YYYY.MM.PATCH.

When to Release

Cut a release when one or more of these land on main:

• New plugin or skill added
• New feature or language support added to an existing skill
• Bug fix that affects skill or plugin behavior

Documentation-only changes do not need a release.

Release Checklist

1. Bump the plugin version in plugins/<name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json using YYYY.MM.PATCH.
2. Set the same version on that plugin's entry and on the top-level version in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json.
3. Commit the version bump with the change, or as chore: bump <plugin> to YYYY.MM.PATCH.

4. After the merge to main:

   git tag YYYY.MM.DD
   git push origin YYYY.MM.DD

5. Create a GitHub release from the tag with a short summary.

Retired plugin names stay in the marketplace renames map. Map a removed plugin to null. Map a plugin that moved into another plugin to that plugin's name. Keep old renames entries when adding new ones.

Adding a Skill

1. Create skills/<name>/SKILL.md with frontmatter and instructions.
2. To ship it in Claude Code, add a symlink under the right plugin and a marketplace entry.
3. Add a short row to the matching group in README.md and INSTALL.md.
4. Leave operator utilities out of .claude-plugin/marketplace.json.