skillify

name	skillify
description	Use this skill when generalizing a workflow from the current session into a reusable SKILL.md.

Skillify

Extracts a repeatable workflow from what was done in the current session and creates a reusable agent skill from it. Different from create-skill, which scaffolds from a blank template — this skill analyzes what actually happened and generalizes it.

When to use

• The user says "skillify this", "make this reusable", "turn what we just did into a skill", or similar
• A multi-step workflow was completed manually and is worth encoding for future use
• You want to capture decisions made in a session so an agent can repeat them without re-deriving

Steps

1. Identify the workflow to generalize

From the session history, extract:

• Trigger: What situation prompted this work? What would cause someone to want to do this again?
• Decisions: What choices were made and why? (These are the core of the skill)
• Steps: What was done, in what order?
• Inputs: What did the workflow need to know upfront?
• Outputs: What did it produce or change?

Separate decisions from documentation. The skill should encode what to decide and how — not reference material the model already knows.

2. Determine skill kind

Signal	Kind
Workflow is personal, not tied to a specific codebase	Global (~/.agents/skills/<name>/)
Workflow only makes sense for contributors to this repo	Repo internal (.agents/skills/<name>/)
Workflow is meant to be installed by users of this package	Repo public (skills/<name>/)

Ask the user if the context is ambiguous.

3. Draft the skill name and description

• Name: A short verb-noun or noun phrase that identifies the workflow (e.g., patch-skill, deploy-preview, sync-tokens)
• Description: ≤120 characters; must contain "Use this skill when"; specific enough to discriminate from other skills

Test the description: would an agent activate this skill in the right situation and NOT activate it otherwise?

4. Write SKILL.md

Use this structure:

---
name: <name>
description: Use this skill when <trigger>. <One-line summary.>
---

# <Title>

## When to use

<Precise trigger conditions>

## Steps

### 1. <Step title>
<Decision logic, not documentation>

### 2. <Step title>
...

## What NOT to do

- <Common mistake or anti-pattern>

Rules:

• Encode the WHY behind each step (the constraint or decision), not just the WHAT
• Flag deterministic steps as candidates for script extraction (see below)
• Keep each step focused on one decision or action

5. Flag script-extraction candidates

Mark any step that:

• Produces the same output given the same input (no judgment needed)
• Involves text manipulation, file I/O, or structured data processing

Add a TODO comment in the skill body:

<!-- TODO: extract to src/<domain>/... -->

6. Validate

Invoke audit-skill on the draft. Fix any CRITICAL findings before continuing.

Key checks to watch for:

• Q1: Does the description contain "Use this skill when"?
• Q5: Is the description ≤120 characters?
• Q6: Are there baked-in stack assumptions that should be detected at runtime?

7. Place and link

Use create-skill conventions:

# If npx skills is available:
npx skills add <path-to-skill>

# Manual fallback:
ln -sf <path-to-skill> ~/.claude/skills/<name>