Atomic Skills for Claude Code
Context-efficient development knowledge via progressive skill discovery
New? Start Here
Install in 30 seconds:
/plugin marketplace add rand/cc-polymath
/plugin install cc-polymath@cc-polymath
Your first 3 commands:
/skills # See what's recommended for your project
/discover-frontend # Load React, Next.js, TypeScript skills (example)
bash scripts/verify-install.sh # Verify installation
Learn more:
- 📖 Getting Started Guide - 5-minute quick start
- 💬 Example Conversations - See it in action
- 🆘 Troubleshooting - Common issues & solutions
- ❓ FAQ - Quick answers
This repository solves a tradeoff problem: how to give Claude Code access to comprehensive development knowledge without overwhelming its context window on boot. The solution is atomic, composable skills organized through a multi-tier discovery system.
The Problem: Context vs Coverage
Using the default mechanism with many atomic skills yields a dilemma:
- Load everything upfront → 25K+ tokens consumed before any real work begins
- Load nothing → Claude lacks essential patterns and best practices
- Manual loading → Users must know what exists to ask for it
This creates an challenging tradeoff between comprehensive coverage and context efficiency.
The Solution: Atomic Skills + Progressive Discovery
Atomic Skills (410+ total)
Each skill is focused, self-contained, and composable:
- Average 320 lines - small enough to load quickly
- Single responsibility - covers one clear topic
- Production-tested - real patterns from building at scale
- Cross-referenced - links to related skills for composition
Why atomic matters: Loading 5 focused skills (1.5K tokens) beats loading one monolithic guide (8K tokens) when you only need specific knowledge. Granularity enables precision.
Three-Tier Architecture
Tier 1: Gateway Skills (23 auto-discovered Agent Skills) Lightweight entry points that activate automatically based on keywords:
discover-api→ triggers on "REST", "GraphQL", "authentication"discover-database→ triggers on "PostgreSQL", "MongoDB", "Redis"discover-zig→ triggers on "Zig", "comptime", "allocators"
Each gateway is ~200 lines with quick reference and loading commands.
Tier 2: Category Indexes (30 detailed references) Full skill listings with descriptions, use cases, and workflows:
api/INDEX.md→ All 7 API skills with integration patternsdatabase/INDEX.md→ All 11 database skills with decision trees- Only loaded when browsing or planning work
Tier 3: Individual Skills (on-demand) Complete implementation guides loaded only when needed:
api/rest-api-design.md→ Full REST patternsdatabase/postgres-query-optimization.md→ EXPLAIN plans, indexes
Why This Works
Context efficiency: 60-84% reduction vs monolithic index
- Old approach: Load 25K token index on boot
- New approach: Load 2-5K tokens of relevant gateways as needed
- Result: More context available for actual code and conversation
No boot overhead: Claude Code starts with zero skills loaded
- Gateway skills auto-discover based on your prompt keywords
- Manual loading available when auto-discovery isn't enough
- System scales to hundreds more skills without boot cost
Discoverability: Users don't need to know what exists
- Keywords in prompts trigger relevant gateways automatically
- Gateways show what's available in their domain
- Progressive loading: gateway → index → specific skill
What's Covered
Core Development (125 skills)
Languages & Frameworks:
- Backend: Python (uv), Zig, Rust, Go (31 skills)
- Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Elegant Design (9 skills)
- Mobile: SwiftUI, Swift concurrency, SwiftData, React Native (10 skills)
Infrastructure & DevOps:
- Build Systems: Make, CMake, Gradle, Maven, Bazel, cross-platform (8 skills)
- Debugging: GDB, LLDB, Python, browser, memory, concurrency, production, distributed systems (14 skills)
- Cloud: AWS (7), GCP (6), Modal.com, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel (13 skills)
- Containers: Docker, Kubernetes, security (5 skills)
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, pipelines (4 skills)
- Observability: Logging, metrics, tracing, OpenTelemetry, incident response (8 skills)