NodeJSmith/mine.write-skill

Write Skill

Guided creation of a new skill for this repo. Gathers requirements, drafts the skill, validates against a quality checklist, and writes it to the correct location.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS — optional skill name or description. If provided, use as starting context.

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Phase 1: Requirements

Ask these one at a time. Skip any already answered by $ARGUMENTS.

AskUserQuestion:
  question: "What task should this skill handle? Describe the problem it solves."
  header: "Purpose"

AskUserQuestion:
  question: "What trigger phrases should invoke it? (e.g., when the user says 'audit the codebase')"
  header: "Triggers"

AskUserQuestion:
  question: "What does the output look like? (e.g., a file, a report, a question, an action)"
  header: "Output"

AskUserQuestion:
  question: "Should this be user-invocable (slash command) or a reference skill (loaded by other skills only)?"
  header: "Invocability"
  multiSelect: false
  options:
    - label: "User-invocable"
      description: "Can be called directly via /mine.<name>"
    - label: "Reference only"
      description: "Loaded by other skills, not directly callable"

Then explore the codebase for related skills, patterns, or existing work that should inform the new skill's design.

---

Phase 2: Draft

Determine the skill name

Derive from the purpose: mine.<kebab-case-name>. Max 30 chars total. Check that skills/mine.<name>/ doesn't already exist.

Write SKILL.md

Write to skills/mine.<name>/SKILL.md using the template in REFERENCE.md. See REFERENCE.md for conventions, AskUserQuestion constraints (header ≤12 chars, max 4 options), and size guidance.

---

Phase 3: Quality Checklist

Validate the drafted skill against both checklists in REFERENCE.md. Quick list:

Structural checks — see REFERENCE.md ("Quality Checklist — Structural Criteria") for what each one means:

1. Description includes "Use when..." trigger phrases
2. SKILL.md under ~100 lines (or split with REFERENCE.md)
3. No time-sensitive info (dates, versions)
4. Consistent terminology throughout
5. At least one concrete example of output
6. References at most one level deep
7. No significant duplication with existing skills
8. All user interaction points use AskUserQuestion

Instruction quality checks (see references/common/instruction-quality.md for full criteria): 9. Diagnostic questions over bare thresholds where applicable 10. Named failure modes — each behavioral rule names the trap it guards against 11. AI-specific bias acknowledgment where the skill addresses a known agent tendency 12. A generative value — one sentence that produces correct behavior even if the rest were deleted 13. "Why" before "what" on major rules

Apply 9-13 proportionally: simple factual rules need only the rule itself; behavioral and principle-level guidance should hit most of these.

Report results. Fix any failures before presenting to the user.

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Phase 4: Wiring

After the user approves the skill:

1. Add a routing entry to the appropriate rules/common/capabilities-*.md file using the trigger phrases from Phase 1 (capabilities-core.md for mine., capabilities-impeccable.md for i-, capabilities-memory.md for cm-*)
2. Add a row to the Skills table in README.md (alphabetical order) and update the skill count in the section header
3. Remind the user to run uv run install.py to create the symlink