Authoring Skills

If you're building agent workflows and need to document what they should do, this is the meta skill you want. It gives your agent structured guidance on when to create a new skill file versus just adding a note to AGENTS.md, plus templates for file structure and naming conventions. Honestly most useful if you're actively maintaining a skills repository or frequently spinning up new agent capabilities. The distinction it draws is practical: detailed workflows and code templates belong in skills, one-liner rules stay in the main config. Comes from the Vercel Next.js repository, so it follows the patterns they use for their own extensive skill library.

skills.sh installs: 1K
GitHub stars: 139.5K
last updated: May 16, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add vercel/next.js --skill authoring-skills --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Authoring Skills

Use this skill when creating or modifying agent skills in .agents/skills/.

When to Create a Skill

Create a skill when content is:

Too detailed for AGENTS.md (code templates, multi-step workflows, diagnostic procedures)
Only relevant for specific tasks (not needed every session)
Self-contained enough to load independently

Keep in AGENTS.md instead when:

It's a one-liner rule or guardrail every session needs
It's a general-purpose gotcha any agent could hit

File Structure

.agents/skills/
└── my-skill/
    ├── SKILL.md          # Required: frontmatter + content
    ├── workflow.md        # Optional: supplementary detail
    └── examples.md        # Optional: referenced from SKILL.md