skill-best-practices

name	skill-best-practices
description	Authors and structures professional-grade agent skills following the agentskills.io spec. Use when creating new skill directories, drafting procedural instructions, or optimizing metadata for discoverability. Don't use for general documentation, non-agentic library code, or README files.

Skill Authoring Procedure

Follow these steps to generate a skill that adheres to the agentskills.io specification and progressive disclosure principles.

Step 1: Initialize and Validate Metadata

1. Define a unique name: 1-64 characters, lowercase, numbers, and single hyphens only.
2. Draft a description: Max 1,024 characters, written in the third person, including negative triggers.
3. Execute Validation Script: Run the validation script to ensure compliance before proceeding: python3 scripts/validate-metadata.py --name "[name]" --description "[description]"
4. If the script returns an error, self-correct the metadata based on the stderr output and re-run until successful.

Step 2: Structure the Directory

1. Create the root directory using the validated name.
2. Initialize the following subdirectories:
   • scripts/: For tiny CLI tools and deterministic logic.
   • references/: For flat (one-level deep) context like schemas or API docs.
   • assets/: For output templates, JSON schemas, or static files.
3. Ensure no human-centric files (README.md, INSTALLATION.md) are created.

Step 3: Draft Core Logic (SKILL.md)

1. Use the template in assets/skill-template.md as the starting point.
2. Write all instructions in the third-person imperative (e.g., "Extract the text," "Run the build").