generate-skills

Generate Skills

Produce .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md files for recurring workflows identified during the grill.

Role in the System

Skills are the capabilities — the procedures that agents execute and workflows compose into pipelines. Each skill is a reusable building block. Agents use skills to accomplish their responsibilities. Workflows chain skills into end-to-end automation.

Skills (capabilities)
  ← Identified from grill decisions + workflow design
  → Executed by Agents (specialist knowledge)
  → Composed by Workflows (pipeline steps)
  → Triggered by Users (slash commands)

Input

Scan results, grill decisions, and the workflow design that determines what capabilities the system needs. Read .claude/scaffold-decisions.md if it exists — this is the primary source for resolved grill decisions. Skills emerge from:

• Recurring multi-step workflows the user described
• Complex processes that benefit from structured instructions
• Domain-specific tasks requiring specialized knowledge
• Automations the user wants on-demand (not automatic — those are hooks)

Skill Identification

During the grill, listen for:

• "I always have to..." → candidate skill
• "The process for X is..." → candidate skill
• "Claude keeps getting X wrong" → candidate skill (with corrective instructions)
• "We do X differently than most" → candidate skill (domain-specific)

Output Format

Each skill at .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md:

---
name: <kebab-case-name>
description: <what the skill does and when to use it — max 1024 chars>
---

Body follows progressive disclosure:

1. Metadata (frontmatter) — always loaded, used for skill discovery
2. Body — loaded when skill is triggered
3. Bundled resources — loaded on demand via file references

Skill Writing Rules

• Imperative/infinitive voice ("Run the test suite" not "You should run the test suite")
• No second person ("Run X" not "You run X")
• Concrete, actionable steps — not philosophy
• Include examples when the pattern isn't obvious
• Reference bundled files with relative paths for large content
• Add disable-model-invocation: true for skills with side effects (deploy, publish, etc.)
• Use $ARGUMENTS for skills that accept input

Common Skill Patterns

Pattern	Example	Triggers
Verify/validate	/verify — run all checks before commit	User says "before I commit I always..."
Deploy	/deploy-staging — deploy to staging env	User describes deployment process
Review	/review — structured code review checklist	User has specific review criteria
Generate	/generate-component — scaffold new component	User has boilerplate patterns
Debug	/debug-<system> — systematic debugging for specific system	User describes recurring debug patterns

Don't Create Skills For

• One-off tasks
• Standard practices well-documented elsewhere
• Project-specific conventions (those go in CLAUDE.md or rules)
• Simple commands (those are aliases, not skills)

Standalone Invocation

/generate-skills — scan + grill + generate skills.

$ARGUMENTS:

• --list — List candidate skills without generating
• --name=verify,deploy — Generate only specified skills
• --quick-grill — Abbreviated interrogation (3-5 questions)