Creating Skills
If you're writing skills for Claude Code, this is your style guide. It walks through the full structure: YAML frontmatter rules, how to write descriptions that Claude will actually find when searching ("Use when tests have race conditions" beats "For async testing"), and why gerund names work better. The degrees of freedom section is smart: be prescriptive for fragile operations, give principles for creative ones. Includes real examples of good versus bad code samples, token budgets for different skill types, and compression techniques to keep skills under 500 lines. Basically codifies what makes a skill discoverable and scannable instead of just another markdown file that gets ignored.
- GitHub stars
- 719
- last updated
- Jun 11, 2026
Install
$ npx -y skills add agentworkforce/relay --skill creating-skills --agent claude-codeInstalls into .claude/skills of the current project.
Files
Creating Skills
Overview
Skills are reference guides for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Write them to help future Claude instances quickly find and apply effective approaches.
Skills must be discoverable (Claude can find them), scannable (quick to evaluate), and actionable (clear examples).
Core principle: Default assumption is Claude is already very smart. Only add context Claude doesn't already have.
When to Use
Create a skill when:
- Technique wasn't intuitively obvious
- Pattern applies broadly across projects
- You'd reference this again
- Others would benefit
Don't create for:
- One-off solutions specific to single project
- Standard practices well-documented elsewhere
- Project conventions (put those in
.claude/CLAUDE.md)
Required Structure
Frontmatter (YAML)
---
name: skill-name-with-hyphens
description: Use when [triggers/symptoms] - [what it does and how it helps]
tags: relevant-tags
---
Rules:
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- Repository
- github.com/agentworkforce/relay
- Categories
- Documentation, Code Review & Quality, Skill Development
- License
- Apache-2.0
- First seen
- Jun 11, 2026
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