| name | skill-authoring |
| description | Use when creating, editing, or reviewing HOTL skills, agents, command prompts, or other behavior-shaping instruction files. |
HOTL Skill Authoring
Overview
HOTL skills are behavior-shaping code. Treat changes to skill text, agent prompts, command routers, and adapter instructions with the same care as production logic: define the failure mode, make the desired behavior explicit, verify the change, and update every index or mirror that exposes it.
When To Use
Use this before changing:
skills/*/SKILL.md
agents/*.md
commands/*.md
cline/rules/*.md
- adapter templates that steer agent behavior
- docs that define skill invocation or routing
Do not use it for ordinary product docs, generated reports, or local project README edits unless they change how agents should behave.
Process
-
State the behavior change
- What agent behavior is wrong, missing, or ambiguous?
- What prompt or session exposed the issue?
- Is the change broadly useful, or project-specific?
-
Choose the right abstraction
- Skill: reusable workflow or process the user can invoke.
- Agent: isolated specialist with a stable output contract.
- Inline prompt: short role text used by one skill only.
- Script/lint: deterministic rule that should not depend on model judgment.
-
Write trigger-only frontmatter
name: kebab-case, no command-name collision.
description: says when to activate, not the workflow steps.
- Avoid descriptions that summarize the process; agents may follow the summary and skip the body.
-
Keep behavior text testable
- Use direct rules for invariants.
- Add red flags for common rationalizations.
- Prefer short, concrete examples over long narratives.
- Separate heavy references or templates into adjacent files only when they reduce the main skill's noise.
-
Update routing and mirrors
- Add new skills to
skills/using-hotl/SKILL.md.
- Update
docs/skills.md, README tables, and Codex docs for user-visible skill changes.
- Update Cline rules or adapter templates when their behavior mirrors the changed skill.
-
Verify behavior
- Add or update smoke tests for structural expectations.
- For high-impact skill wording, run pressure tests or before/after sessions that demonstrate the target behavior.
- Run
bats test/smoke.bats before claiming the skill change is ready.
Description Trap
The frontmatter description is discovery text, not a miniature skill. If it contains a workflow summary, an agent may act on that summary without reading the full body.
Bad:
description: Use when executing plans - dispatches workers, reviews every task, then finalizes
Good:
description: Use when executing implementation workflows that can delegate contained steps to fresh subagents.
Checklist