skillkit-help

name	skillkit-help
description	Pre-build orientation for skill creators. Answers "what are skills?", "should I make one?", and "is my skill good enough?" before you start building. Use for: understand skills, decide skills vs subagents, validate an existing skill. When ready to actually build, invoke /skillkit directly instead.
category	core

Routing

Detect which path the user needs and jump directly to it.

User says	Route
"what are skills", "how do skills work", "explain", "understand", "not sure", "should I"	→ Path A
"validate", "check", "review my skill", "is this good"	→ Path B
"ready to build", "let's create", "make a skill"	Tell them: "You're ready — invoke /skillkit directly to start building."
Ambiguous	Ask: "Do you want to (A) understand how skills work, (B) validate an existing skill, or are you ready to build (invoke /skillkit)?"

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Path A: Understand How Skills Work

Goal: Build a mental model of skills — what they are, when to use them, and whether you actually need one — before starting to build.

Step 1 — Why skills exist

Load and read in full: knowledge/foundation/01-why-skills-exist.md

Summarize for the user: skills are reusable prompt-time instructions that extend your agent's behavior for specific tasks. They live in ~/.claude/skills/ and are invoked via /skill-name.

Step 2 — Skills vs subagents

Load and read: knowledge/foundation/02-skills-vs-subagents-comparison.md

Explain the difference with a concrete example:

• Skill: "When I type /review-pr, load these code review instructions"
• Subagent: "Spin up a separate agent with browser tools to scrape and summarize a URL"

Step 3 — Decision framework

Load and read: knowledge/foundation/03-skills-vs-subagents-decision-tree.md

Walk the user through the decision tree for their specific use case.

Step 4 — Platform constraints

Load and read: knowledge/foundation/06-platform-constraints.md

Cover the key rules: frontmatter requirements, size limits, trigger conditions.

Step 5 — Hand off to the builder

Tell the user: "You now have enough context to start building. Invoke /skillkit — it will guide you through the full creation workflow."

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Path B: Validate an Existing Skill

Goal: Check an existing skill for quality issues before sharing or publishing.

Step 1 — Load validation standards

Load and read in full: knowledge/application/12-testing-and-validation.md

Step 2 — Run the checklist

Ask the user to share their SKILL.md content or path. Then check:

• Frontmatter: name, description, category all present
• Description has a clear trigger (when to invoke it)
• At least one concrete usage example in description or body
• No hardcoded secrets, API keys, or PII
• SKILL.md is under 500 lines (if over, recommend splitting)
• Sections are clearly delimited with ## headings
• Invoke in Claude Code: does it fire correctly?

Report findings: pass/fail per item, specific fix for each failure.