bmad-builder

BMAD Builder

Function: Scaffold and validate custom planning/orchestration skills for the BMAD Planning & Orchestrator plugin. Produces compliant SKILL.md files, shell scripts, and templates — pre-wired to this plugin's path conventions — and runs scope-violation checks to keep new skills inside the PLAN/ORCHESTRATE boundary.

Scope (PLAN, never build)

This skill produces planning artifacts and skill skeleton files. It does NOT write application code, run tests, lint, check coverage, or execute builds. If a skill being designed is tempted to "implement", "fix the code", "run the suite", or "review the diff" — that is a scope violation. Plan and hand off instead.

Three intents

Always clarify which intent applies before starting.

Create — new planning skill from scratch

1. Gather requirements (use TodoWrite to track):

   • Skill name (lowercase-hyphen, prefixed bmad-; e.g. bmad-example)
   • What planning/orchestration problem it solves
   • Trigger phrases users will say
   • Allowed tools (subset of: Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Glob, Grep, WebSearch, WebFetch, TodoWrite)
   • Which BMAD track(s) it applies to (Quick Flow / BMad Method / Enterprise)
   • Upstream BMAD counterpart (e.g. bmad-risk-assessment)

2. Run the scaffold script to create the directory:

   bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-builder/scripts/scaffold-skill.sh <skill-name>
   

   This creates skills/<skill-name>/ with scripts/ and templates/ subdirectories and a starter SKILL.md.

3. Fill the SKILL.md using the skill template:

   • Reference: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-builder/templates/skill.template.md
   • Keep body under 5K tokens; push long reference detail to a sibling REFERENCE.md in the new skill's own folder
   • Use ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} for all paths to bundled scripts/templates
   • Artifacts go to bmad-output/ (honor user-configured folder)
   • End with the mandatory attribution footer (see template)

4. Validate the new skill:

   bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-builder/scripts/validate-skill.sh \
     ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md
   

   Fix all errors; review all warnings before declaring done.

Validate — check an existing SKILL.md

Run the validator directly against any SKILL.md path:

bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-builder/scripts/validate-skill.sh <path-to-SKILL.md>

The validator checks:

• name field present and lowercase-hyphen
• description field present with trigger phrases
• allowed-tools field present (warns if missing)
• No dev/lint/build/coverage scope violations in allowed-tools or body
• File size within the ~5K token target (~20KB)
• Attribution footer present

Scaffold — directory structure only

Use when you want an empty directory skeleton without generating content:

bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/bmad-builder/scripts/scaffold-skill.sh <skill-name>

Then fill SKILL.md manually using the template as a guide.

Scope law for new skills

Every skill created by this builder MUST comply with the Scope Law:

• The plugin PLANS and ORCHESTRATES. It NEVER writes application code, runs tests, lints, checks coverage, builds, or reviews implemented code.
• The last artifact any skill may produce is a ready-for-dev story file or a handoff manifest. Implementation is handed to EXTERNAL dev tools/plugins.
• Acceptance Criteria, Testing STRATEGY, and Dev Notes are planning — allowed. Executing tests or writing implementation code is out of scope.

The validate-skill.sh script enforces this automatically by flagging forbidden terms.

BMAD fidelity reminders

When designing skills, track the BMAD Method conventions:

Convention	Rule
Scale Tracks	Quick Flow / BMad Method / Enterprise — user confirms interactively
Story size	~2-8h, one dev-day max; split if larger
Delivery tracking	Stories remaining / completion rate — NO Fibonacci points, velocity, or burndown
Story name	{epic}.{story}.{slug}.story.md
Story status	backlog → ready-for-dev → in-progress → review → done
Decision log	Decisions thread through decision-log.md
Project constitution	project-context.md loaded across skills
Three intents	Create / Update / Validate where applicable

Available scripts

Script	Purpose
scripts/scaffold-skill.sh <name>	Creates skills/<name>/ with subdirs and starter SKILL.md
scripts/validate-skill.sh <SKILL.md>	Validates frontmatter, scope, size, and attribution footer

Invoke with the ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} prefix shown above. The orchestrator marks scripts executable; you may also run them via bash.

Templates

Template	Use for
templates/skill.template.md	Skeleton for a new planning/orchestration SKILL.md
templates/document.template.md	Generic planning document (PRD section, brief, spec section, etc.)

Subagent strategy

For creating a full skill package in parallel:

Agent	Task	Output
Agent 1	Draft SKILL.md body from gathered requirements	skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Agent 2	Write domain scripts (validators, checklists)	skills/<name>/scripts/
Agent 3	Write domain templates	skills/<name>/templates/
Agent 4	Write REFERENCE.md if body exceeds 5K tokens	skills/<name>/REFERENCE.md

Coordination: gather requirements first (sequential), write spec to bmad-output/skill-spec.md, then fan out. Main context validates all outputs with validate-skill.sh and assembles the final package.

Notes for LLMs

• Use TodoWrite to track which components have been created.
• Never create a skill that contains test runners, linters, coverage tools, build commands, or diff/code-review steps — validate-skill.sh will flag these.
• Always end SKILL.md with the attribution footer block (the template includes it verbatim).
• Keep SKILL.md under 5K tokens; use REFERENCE.md for lengthy patterns.
• Use ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} for all internal paths — never hardcode ~/.claude or absolute machine paths.
• Output artifacts (non-skill files) go under bmad-output/ by default.

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Part of the BMAD Planning & Orchestrator plugin — a Claude Code harness for the BMAD Method by the BMAD Code Organization (https://github.com/bmad-code-org/BMAD-METHOD). Implements the spirit of bmad-bmb-builder. All methodology credit belongs to the BMAD Code Organization.