skill-creator
The Skill Creator provides structured guidance for developing modular packages that extend agent capabilities through specialized workflows, tool integrations, and domain expertise. Use it when building new skills or enhancing existing ones to equip agents with procedural knowledge and tools for specific domains, ensuring context-efficient design that matches task complexity and variability requirements.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/eigent-ai/eigent /tmp/skill-creator && cp -r /tmp/skill-creator/resources/example-skills/skill-creator ~/.claude/skills/skill-creatorSKILL.md
# Skill Creator
This skill provides guidance for creating effective skills.
## About Skills
Skills are modular, self-contained packages that extend agent capabilities by providing
specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools. Think of them as "onboarding guides" for specific
domains or tasks—they transform a general-purpose agent into a specialized agent
equipped with procedural knowledge that no model can fully possess.
### What Skills Provide
1. Specialized workflows - Multi-step procedures for specific domains
2. Tool integrations - Instructions for working with specific file formats or APIs
3. Domain expertise - Company-specific knowledge, schemas, business logic
4. Bundled resources - Scripts, references, and assets for complex and repetitive tasks
## Core Principles
### Concise is Key
The context window is a public good. Skills share the context window with everything else the agent needs: system prompt, conversation history, other Skills' metadata, and the actual user request.
**Default assumption: The agent is already very capable.** Only add context the agent doesn't already have. Challenge each piece of information: "Does the agent really need this explanation?" and "Does this paragraph justify its token cost?"
Prefer concise examples over verbose explanations.
### Set Appropriate Degrees of Freedom
Match the level of specificity to the task's fragility and variability:
**High freedom (text-based instructions)**: Use when multiple approaches are valid, decisions depend on context, or heuristics guide the approach.
**Medium freedom (pseudocode or scripts with parameters)**: Use when a preferred pattern exists, some variation is acceptable, or configuration affects behavior.
**Low freedom (specific scripts, few parameters)**: Use when operations are fragile and error-prone, consistency is critical, or a specific sequence must be followed.
Think of the agent exploring a path: a narrow bridge with cliffs needs specific guardrails (low freedom), while an open field allows many routes (high freedom).
### Anatomy of a Skill
Every skill consists of a required SKILL.md file and optional bundled resources:
```
skill-name/
├── SKILL.md (required)
│ ├── YAML frontmatter metadata (required)
│ │ ├── name: (required)
│ │ ├── description: (required)
│ │ └── compatibility: (optional, rarely needed)
│ └── Markdown instructions (required)
└── Bundled Resources (optional)
├── scripts/ - Executable code (Python/Bash/etc.)
├── references/ - Documentation intended to be loaded into context as needed
└── assets/ - Files used in output (templates, icons, fonts, etc.)
```
#### SKILL.md (required)
Every SKILL.md consists of:
- **Frontmatter** (YAML): Contains `name` and `description` fields (required), plus optional fields like `license`, `metadata`, and `compatibility`. Only `name` and `description` are read by the agent to determine when the skill triggers, so be clear and comprehensive about what the skill is and when it should be used. The `compatibility` field is for noting environment requirements (target product, system packages, etc.) but most skills don't need it.
- **Body** (Markdown): Instructions and guidance for using the skill. Only loaded AFTER the skill triggers (if at all).
#### Bundled Resources (optional)
##### Scripts (`scripts/`)
Executable code (Python/Bash/etc.) for tasks that require deterministic reliability or are repeatedly rewritten.
- **When to include**: When the same code is being rewritten repeatedly or deterministic reliability is needed
- **Example**: `scripts/rotate_pdf.py` for PDF rotation tasks
- **Benefits**: Token efficient, deterministic, may be executed without loading into context
- **Note**: Scripts may still need to be read by the agent for patching or environment-specific adjustments
##### References (`references/`)
Documentation and reference material intended to be loaded as needed into context to inform the agent's process and thinking.
- **When to include**: For documentation that the agent should reference while working
- **Examples**: `references/finance.md` for financial schemas, `references/mnda.md` for company NDA template, `references/policies.md` for company policies, `references/api_docs.md` for API specifications
- **Use cases**: Database schemas, API documentation, domain knowledge, company policies, detailed workflow guides
- **Benefits**: Keeps SKILL.md lean, loaded only when the agent determines it's needed
- **Best practice**: If files are large (>10k words), include grep search patterns in SKILL.md
- **Avoid duplication**: Information should live in either SKILL.md or references files, not both. Prefer references files for detailed information unless it's truly core to the skill—this keeps SKILL.md lean while making information discoverable without hogging the context window. Keep only essential procedural instructions and workflow guidance in SKILL.md; move detailed reference material, schemas, and examples to references files.
##### Assets (`assets/`)
Files not intended to be loaded into context, but rather used within the output the agent produces.
- **When to include**: When the skill needs files that will be used in the final output
- **Examples**: `assets/logo.png` for brand assets, `assets/slides.pptx` for PowerPoint templates, `assets/frontend-template/` for HTML/React boilerplate, `assets/font.ttf` for typography
- **Use cases**: Templates, images, icons, boilerplate code, fonts, sample documents that get copied or modified
- **Benefits**: Separates output resources from documentation, enables the agent to use files without loading them into context
#### What to Not Include in a Skill
A skill should only contain essential files that directly support its functionality. Do NOT create extraneous documentation or auxiliary files, including:
- README.md
- INSTALLATION_GUIDE.md
- QUICK_REFERENCE.md
- CHANGELOG.md
- etc.
The skill should only contain tUse this skill whenever the user wants to create, read, edit, or manipulate Word documents (.docx files). Triggers include: any mention of \"Word doc\", \"word document\", \".docx\", or requests to produce professional documents with formatting like tables of contents, headings, page numbers, or letterheads. Also use when extracting or reorganizing content from .docx files, inserting or replacing images in documents, performing find-and-replace in Word files, working with tracked changes or comments, or converting content into a polished Word document. If the user asks for a \"report\", \"memo\", \"letter\", \"template\", or similar deliverable as a Word or .docx file, use this skill. Do NOT use for PDFs, spreadsheets, Google Docs, or general coding tasks unrelated to document generation.
Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files. This includes reading or extracting text/tables from PDFs, combining or merging multiple PDFs into one, splitting PDFs apart, rotating pages, adding watermarks, creating new PDFs, filling PDF forms, encrypting/decrypting PDFs, extracting images, and OCR on scanned PDFs to make them searchable. If the user mentions a .pdf file or asks to produce one, use this skill.
Use this skill any time a .pptx file is involved in any way — as input, output, or both. This includes: creating slide decks, pitch decks, or presentations; reading, parsing, or extracting text from any .pptx file (even if the extracted content will be used elsewhere, like in an email or summary); editing, modifying, or updating existing presentations; combining or splitting slide files; working with templates, layouts, speaker notes, or comments. Trigger whenever the user mentions \"deck,\" \"slides,\" \"presentation,\" or references a .pptx filename, regardless of what they plan to do with the content afterward. If a .pptx file needs to be opened, created, or touched, use this skill.
Security auditing for code, configs, and infrastructure. Use when the user wants to audit or improve security: scan for vulnerabilities (SQL injection, XSS, command injection, path traversal), detect hardcoded secrets and credentials, review auth and authorization, check dependencies for known CVEs, audit config files for insecure defaults, or generate security reports. Trigger on \"security audit\", \"vulnerability scan\", \"code review for security\", \"find secrets\", \"check for vulnerabilities\", \"OWASP\", \"CVE\", or questions about code security.
Use this skill any time a spreadsheet file is the primary input or output. This means any task where the user wants to: open, read, edit, or fix an existing .xlsx, .xlsm, .csv, or .tsv file (e.g., adding columns, computing formulas, formatting, charting, cleaning messy data); create a new spreadsheet from scratch or from other data sources; or convert between tabular file formats. Trigger especially when the user references a spreadsheet file by name or path — even casually (like \"the xlsx in my downloads\") — and wants something done to it or produced from it. Also trigger for cleaning or restructuring messy tabular data files (malformed rows, misplaced headers, junk data) into proper spreadsheets. The deliverable must be a spreadsheet file. Do NOT trigger when the primary deliverable is a Word document, HTML report, standalone Python script, database pipeline, or Google Sheets API integration, even if tabular data is involved.