curate-skills

name

curate-skills

description

Post-extraction quality pass over _analysis/extracted_skills_history/ and _analysis/extracted_skills_codebase/ — applies three tests to every skill and proposes keep, delete, merge, or rewrite. TRIGGER when: finishing `/extract-skills` (Claude Code) or `@extract-skills` (Cursor), `/synthesize` (Claude Code) or `@synthesize` (Cursor), or `/synthesize-decisions` (Claude Code) or `@synthesize-decisions` (Cursor), reviewing extracted skills before publishing, cleaning up duplicate or framework-specific skills, running `/curate-skills` (Claude Code) or `@curate-skills` (Cursor) after any extraction step.

When to use this skill

Post-extraction cleanup pass over _analysis/extracted_skills_history/ and _analysis/extracted_skills_codebase/. Applies three tests to every existing skill and proposes one of four actions: keep, delete, merge, or rewrite. Produces a curation report and waits for developer confirmation before making any file changes.

---

Step 1 — Read all extracted skills

Read every SKILL.md file under _analysis/extracted_skills_history/ and _analysis/extracted_skills_codebase/. If both directories are absent or empty, stop:

"No skills found in _analysis/extracted_skills_history/ or _analysis/extracted_skills_codebase/. Run /run-history-pipeline (Claude Code) or @run-history-pipeline (Cursor), or /run-analysis-pipeline (Claude Code) or @run-analysis-pipeline (Cursor), first."

For each skill, record:

• Name and file path (including which directory it came from)
• Description (the full description field — this determines when the skill loads)
• Format: failure-mode skill OR key-decisions skill
• The list of key decisions or failure modes (titles only)
• Status

Do not summarize or collapse at this stage — you need the full content of each skill to apply the tests.

---

Step 2 — Apply Test 1: Would Claude already know this?

For each skill independently, ask: can the correct decision be derived from official documentation, standard programming principles, or general production engineering knowledge — without having encountered this failure in production?

Apply these three concrete checks:

1. Documentation check — is this behavior explicitly covered in the library or framework's official docs, migration guide, or getting-started tutorial? If the docs say "do X in this situation", the skill adds no value.

2. First-principles check — is this a standard pattern any experienced developer would reach by reasoning? Examples of things Claude already knows: connection pool lifecycle (close() clears a reference, not the pool), async isolation via ContextVar, fail-open for cache reads, RAII patterns, thread-safety in global state.

3. Derivability check — would a developer with no specific production experience with this technology reach the correct decision? If the skill requires a production failure to become obvious, it's worth keeping. If a careful developer reading the docs would get it right, it isn't.

If all three checks say yes → mark DELETE. The skill doesn't add value over what Claude brings to any conversation. If any check says no → continue to Test 2.

When in doubt, keep. A false DELETE is more costly than a false KEEP — a deleted skill is gone; an extra skill just loads occasionally.

---

Step 3 — Apply Test 2: Is this redundant?

Compare remaining skills against each other. Flag pairs where one skill is substantially subsumed by another.

Apply these checks for each pair:

1. Decision overlap — do they share more than half their key decisions or failure modes, teaching the same lesson at the same abstraction level?

2. Subsumption — would a developer who has read Skill A gain nothing new from Skill B? (One-directional: A might subsume B without B subsuming A.)

3. TRIGGER collision — do their description TRIGGER conditions overlap significantly, meaning they'd both load in the same situation?

If a pair is redundant → mark MERGE: identify the better skill to keep (better name, richer decisions, cleaner format), absorb any unique decisions from the weaker one, then delete the weaker file.

If no pair is redundant → continue to Test 3.

---

Step 4 — Apply Test 3: Is the lesson framework-specific or just the evidence?

For each remaining skill, ask: if you strip the framework class names, method names, and config flags, does the core lesson still hold — and would it apply to a developer using a different framework with the same structural pattern?

Apply these checks:

1. Name test — does the skill name contain a framework name (e.g. langgraph-, redis-, openai-) that is load-bearing? Or is it incidental — the framework is just where the evidence comes from?

2. Decision test — restate each key decision without the framework-specific vocabulary. Does it still make sense? Example: "Call .pop() on LangGraph state flags before LLM invocation" restates as "consume one-turn signals destructively before the operation that reads them" — the framework is incidental, the lesson is about ephemeral signal lifecycle in any stateful system.

3. Transfer test — would a developer using a different framework with the same structural pattern (e.g. a different agent framework, a different cache library) benefit from this skill? If yes, the lesson generalizes.

If lesson generalizes, evidence is framework-specific → mark REWRITE:

• Broaden the title to name the pattern, not the framework (e.g. stateful-agent-ephemeral-signals instead of langgraph-routing-signal-design)
• Generalize description and TRIGGER conditions to fire for any framework with the pattern
• Keep the framework-specific code in the structural template as the primary example
• Add a note: "Evidence from: [framework/technology]"

If lesson is genuinely framework-specific — the framework's behavior is the thing being taught, not just the vehicle for a broader lesson → mark KEEP as-is. The framework name in the title is correct; the skill should only trigger for that framework.

Edge case — partially generalizable: If 2 of 4 decisions generalize and 2 are framework-specific, split into two concerns or keep as-is and note which decisions are transferable. Do not force a rewrite that dilutes the framework-specific decisions.

---

Step 5 — Produce curation report

Before making any changes, present the full report. One entry per skill:

ACTION   skill-name
         Reason: {1-2 sentences — which test flagged it and why}
         {For MERGE: "Merge into: target-skill-name. Unique decisions to absorb: [list]"}
         {For REWRITE: "New name: proposed-name. Changes: [title, description, decisions — which change and how]"}

End with a summary count:

Summary: {N} keep, {N} delete, {N} merge ({N} skills → {N}), {N} rewrite
Net change: {N} skills before → {N} after

Then ask:

"Confirm all actions, or tell me which ones to override. You can override individual actions — e.g. 'keep redis-connection-pool-close-semantics even though it would be deleted'."

Wait for the developer's response. Apply any overrides they specify. Then proceed to Step 6.

---

Step 6 — Execute confirmed actions

Execute in this order to avoid path conflicts. Write all changes back to the same directory the skill was read from (extracted_skills_history/ or extracted_skills_codebase/):

1. Merges first — write the merged SKILL.md to the target skill's file, then delete the source skill's directory
2. Rewrites — write the rewritten SKILL.md in place (same directory, updated content). Also update plugin.json in the same directory: set name to match the new skill name, and update description to match the new SKILL.md frontmatter description (which must contain the updated TRIGGER clause). Preserve all other plugin.json fields (author, repository, category, source, commit_date, source_hash). Rename the directory if the name changed.
3. Deletes — remove the skill directory entirely
4. Keeps — no action

---

Step 7 — Report final state

Tell the developer:

• Final count of skills and their names

Do not update incidents.md or design.md. Curation operates only on _analysis/extracted_skills_history/ and _analysis/extracted_skills_codebase/.