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skill-creation-walkthrough

Step-by-step guide for creating your own Claude Skills, from deciding whether a skill is the right tool to writing the SKILL.md file, structuring reference material, and making it trigger reliably. Use when you want to package a workflow, framework, or repeated task into a reusable Skill, when an existing skill is not triggering or not loading the right context, when you are auditing a skill that is underperforming, or when you want to publish a skill for others. Also triggers when someone asks "how do I make a skill" or "what makes a good skill". Useful for individuals, teams, and anyone publishing skills publicly.

74

Quality

92%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

No eval scenarios have been run

SecuritybySnyk

Passed

No known issues

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Discovery

100%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

This is an excellent skill description that clearly communicates what the skill does (guides creation of Claude Skills from start to finish), when to use it (multiple explicit trigger scenarios), and includes natural language phrases users would actually say. It is distinctive, comprehensive, and well-structured with no significant weaknesses.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

Lists multiple specific concrete actions: creating Skills, writing the SKILL.md file, structuring reference material, making it trigger reliably, auditing underperforming skills, and publishing skills. These are concrete, actionable capabilities.

3 / 3

Completeness

Clearly answers both 'what' (step-by-step guide for creating Skills, writing SKILL.md, structuring reference material, making triggers reliable) and 'when' (explicit 'Use when...' clause with multiple trigger scenarios including packaging workflows, debugging triggers, auditing, and publishing).

3 / 3

Trigger Term Quality

Includes strong natural trigger terms users would actually say: 'how do I make a skill', 'what makes a good skill', 'skill is not triggering', 'not loading the right context', 'auditing a skill', 'publish a skill', 'SKILL.md'. Good coverage of natural language variations.

3 / 3

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Occupies a very clear niche — it's a meta-skill about creating and debugging Skills themselves. The triggers are highly specific to skill authoring and unlikely to conflict with any domain-specific skill.

3 / 3

Total

12

/

12

Passed

Implementation

85%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

This is a strong, well-structured meta-skill that provides genuinely actionable guidance for creating Claude Skills. Its main weakness is verbosity — it explains concepts Claude already understands (like what progressive disclosure is and how skills load) and has some redundancy between the Phase 3 description guidance and the later 'Deep dive: description anatomy' section. Despite this, the concrete examples, clear workflow, testing checklist, and output format make it highly usable.

Suggestions

Remove or drastically shorten 'The framework: how skills work' section — Claude already knows how skills load and what progressive disclosure means. A single sentence linking to any needed context would suffice.

Merge the 'Deep dive: description anatomy' into Phase 3 or move it entirely to a reference file to reduce redundancy and body length.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The skill is well-written but verbose for its audience. Sections like 'The framework: how skills work' explain progressive disclosure mechanics that Claude already understands. The 'Deep dive: description anatomy' section repeats guidance already covered in Phase 3. The worked example is valuable but could be more compact. Overall, there's meaningful content but ~30% could be trimmed without losing actionability.

2 / 3

Actionability

Highly actionable throughout: concrete description formulas with good/bad examples, a specific SKILL.md template structure, a testing checklist with specific test types, naming conventions for references, and a clear output format specifying exactly what deliverables to produce. The worked post-mortem example walks through every phase concretely.

3 / 3

Workflow Clarity

Six clearly sequenced phases from decision through iteration, each with explicit criteria. Phase 6 includes a detailed testing checklist with validation steps (trigger test, edge case test, false positive test, output test, length test) and a feedback loop of common fixes mapped to specific symptoms. The workflow handles the iterative nature of skill creation well.

3 / 3

Progressive Disclosure

Excellent structure: the SKILL.md body contains the complete workflow and framework, while three clearly described reference files handle templates, description patterns, and methodology guidance. References are signaled with one-line descriptions and linked paths. The content appropriately splits deep-dive material (description cookbook, methodology guide) from the main workflow.

3 / 3

Total

11

/

12

Passed

Validation

90%

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation10 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

frontmatter_unknown_keys

Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata

Warning

Total

10

/

11

Passed

Repository
rampstackco/claude-skills
Reviewed

Table of Contents

Is this your skill?

If you maintain this skill, you can claim it as your own. Once claimed, you can manage eval scenarios, bundle related skills, attach documentation or rules, and ensure cross-agent compatibility.