PRP Meta-Skill — Author & Refactor Skills

A PRP-style runbook for two jobs:

• Create a new skill from scratch (or from an existing command/prompt).
• Refactor an existing skill — split detail into references/, move output formats into templates/, and trim SKILL.md to a lean spine of pointers.

This skill is built the way it teaches: a lean body that defers detail to references/. Follow that example.

Prescribe the craft, not the content

This skill is opinionated about how to build a skill well and deliberately agnostic about what any given skill — or the artifact it produces — should contain.

• Prescribe (firm, universal): progressive disclosure, third-person trigger-rich descriptions, imperative body, no-duplication, lean body, every reference wired, deliberate invocation control, validation that fits. See references/skill-standards.md.
• Do NOT prescribe (per-project, the author's call): the sections a plan / PRD / report should contain, what a project's template looks like, which phases exist, the domain vocabulary. There is no canonical output shape — guide the author to a good decision, never hand them a fixed one.

Restrictions are not rigidity: be strict on the craft so the author stays free on the content.

The PRP lens — applied to the skill type

Classify the skill first (workflow / artifact-generator / knowledge-reference / tool-wrapper — see references/skill-standards.md → Skill types), then apply only the principles that fit:

1. Context is King — give the agent ALL the context it needs (patterns, gotchas, schemas, examples) via whichever source fits: inline, bundled and disclosed on demand, pointed to by file path or URL, or gathered from the user at runtime. Curate it — don't dump it. (references/skill-standards.md → Context sources.)
2. Validation that fits — workflow skills ship verifiable gates, and prefer an external, authoritative check (exit code, file presence) over the agent's own "done" sentinel. A knowledge/reference skill has nothing to validate — don't bolt a loop onto it.
3. Information dense — real trigger phrases, real examples, real file:line. No filler, no restating what the model already knows.
4. Progressive success — ship a minimal SKILL.md that triggers correctly first, validate, then enrich with references. Don't build all the references before the spine works.

Step 0 — Pick the mode

• Creating a new skill → follow references/creating-skills.md.
• Refactoring / trimming an existing skill → follow references/refactoring-skills.md.
• Both modes obey the same rules (frontmatter spec, writing style, progressive disclosure, no-duplication, invocation control) → read references/skill-standards.md first.

If the argument is blank, ask which mode and what the skill/target is. Do not guess.

Create — quick spine (full detail in references/creating-skills.md)

1. Gather context (PRP): collect the concrete phrases that should trigger the skill, the task it performs, the gotchas, and existing patterns to mirror.
2. Plan resources: what repeats → a scripts/ script; what informs thinking → a references/ doc; what is reused in the output → a templates//assets/ file.
3. Scaffold: copy templates/SKILL.template.md into .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md; create references/, templates/ only as needed.
4. Write the spine: third-person trigger-rich description; imperative, lean body; push detail to references.
5. Validate & iterate (references/validation.md): checklist → skill-reviewer → trigger test.

Refactor — quick spine (full detail in references/refactoring-skills.md)

1. Inventory the target SKILL.md. Classify each block: spine (keep) vs extractable (output-format templates, schemas, long worked examples, exhaustive pattern catalogs, troubleshooting, edge-case lists).
2. Extract verbatim into the TARGET skill's own references/ (or templates/ for output formats). Do not reword anything that affects behavior.
3. Replace with a pointer. For always-needed content (e.g. an output format the agent must always follow), add a mandatory-read instruction: "Before producing output, read templates/<x>.md." For sometimes-needed content, a lazy pointer ("For edge cases, see references/<x>.md").
4. Behavior-preservation check — the trimmed skill + references must drive the SAME process and SAME output as before. Nothing lost, nothing duplicated.
5. Validate (references/validation.md).

The single biggest refactor risk: moving an always-needed output format into a lazily-loaded reference, so the agent forgets to read it and the output silently changes. Always pair such extractions with a mandatory-read instruction. See references/refactoring-skills.md.

Resources

• references/skill-standards.md — frontmatter spec, progressive disclosure, writing style, no-duplication, invocation control, cross-provider notes
• references/creating-skills.md — full PRP-style create runbook
• references/refactoring-skills.md — full split-and-trim runbook with a before/after example
• references/validation.md — validation gates, checklist, skill-reviewer, trigger test
• templates/SKILL.template.md — lean SKILL.md skeleton
• templates/reference.template.md — skeleton for an extracted reference/template file