| name | capture-skill |
| description | Capture learnings, patterns, or workflows from the current conversation into a new or existing skill. Use when the user says "save this as a skill", "capture this for next time", or when a useful workflow emerged that should be preserved. |
Capture Skill from Conversation
Process
- Identify: Review conversation for workflows, gotchas, patterns, or domain knowledge worth preserving
- Confirm scope: Summarize what you plan to capture; confirm with user
- Decide destination: New or existing skill? Personal (
~/.cursor/skills/) or project (.cursor/skills/)?
- Write: Follow distillation guidelines below
- Verify: Under 500 lines, description has trigger terms, content is accurate
Distillation Guidelines
Transform messy conversation into clean, reusable instructions.
Do:
- Extract the final working approach, not failed attempts (unless gotchas are instructive)
- Generalize from specific case (replace hardcoded values with
<placeholders>)
- Include the "why" behind non-obvious steps
- Add only context the agent wouldn't already know
Don't:
- Include conversation artifacts ("as we discussed", "you mentioned")
- Repeat general knowledge the agent already has
- Add verbose explanations where a code example suffices
Updating Existing Skills
- Read the existing SKILL.md first
- Integrate new learnings without duplicating content
- Preserve existing structure and voice
Edge Cases
| Situation | Action |
|---|
| Multiple topics in conversation | Ask which to capture, or create separate skills |
| Learning too small for a skill | Create a Cursor rule (.cursor/rules/) instead |
| Existing skill needs major rewrite | Confirm: restructure existing or create new one? |
