Starting point for writing a new skill. Use when creating a skill from scratch and you want the expected SKILL.md structure, frontmatter fields, and description conventions to copy from.
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SKILL.md
name: template-skilldescription: Starting point for writing a new skill. Use when creating a skill from scratch and you want the expected SKILL.md structure, frontmatter fields, and description conventions to copy from.
Template skill
A skeleton to copy when starting a new skill. Copy this directory, rename it,
and replace each section below.
Frontmatter
Two fields are required, and both are validated before release:
name — the directory name. Lowercase, hyphen-separated, no spaces.
description — one or two sentences covering what the skill does and when
it should be used. This is the only text shown in the index and it is what
gets matched against a user's request, so lead with the capability and include
the trigger conditions ("Use when ...").
Anything containing ': ' must be quoted, or the YAML will not parse.
Body
Write the instructions an agent should follow. What works well:
Numbered steps when order matters.
Concrete commands and file paths over descriptions of them.
The failure cases and what to do about them.
Any prerequisite: required env vars, installed tools, credentials.
Never hardcode credentials. Read them from the environment and exit with a clear
message when unset.
Bundled files
Reference extra files by relative path (scripts/run.py, references/api.md)
and make sure anything referenced actually exists in the directory.