find-skills

name	find-skills
description	Discover, evaluate, and create project-specific skills. Use when: the user needs a capability not covered by built-in skills, wants to find patterns for a specific tool or service, or asks about extending the skills directory. Also use when asking 'how do I add a new skill.'

Find & Create Skills

Discover community skills and create new ones when SerpentStack's built-in skills don't cover what the user needs.

When to Use This Skill

Use this when the user asks for something outside the scope of the built-in skills:

Built-in Skill	Covers
scaffold	Generating new API endpoints and frontend pages following project conventions
auth	Understanding auth, protecting routes, swapping providers
test	Running and interpreting pytest and vitest
db-migrate	Alembic migrations, schema changes, seed data
dev-server	Starting, monitoring, and auto-fixing the dev environment
deploy	Docker build, ECR push, Terraform apply to AWS
git-workflow	Branches, commits, PRs, rebasing
generate-skills	Interviewing a developer to produce project-specific skills for any codebase
model-routing	Delegating code generation to on-device models (Ollama) to reduce costs

If the user needs something else — monitoring, Stripe, email, Slack, S3 file uploads, PDF generation, browser automation, etc. — search for a community skill or official docs first before building from scratch.

Step 1: Search for Existing Skills

Via web search (recommended):

Search for: "SKILL.md" <what the user needs> or site:github.com SKILL.md <topic>

Via package registries:

Many integrations have official SDKs with excellent docs:

# Python packages
uv search <topic>

# Check PyPI directly
# https://pypi.org/search/?q=<topic>

# NPM packages
npm search <topic>

Via official documentation:

For third-party services, always prefer the provider's official docs over community implementations — they're always up to date:

• Stripe: https://docs.stripe.com/api
• AWS S3: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/s3/
• SendGrid: https://docs.sendgrid.com/api-reference
• Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/docs/usage/api

Step 2: Evaluate Before Adopting

Before using any community skill or third-party integration, check:

1. Read the instructions — does it actually do what the user needs?
2. Check requirements — what dependencies does it need? Are those installed?
3. Check for red flags — does it ask you to run curl | bash from unknown URLs? Does it request API keys be sent to external services?
4. Check recency — is the source recently updated, or abandoned?

Step 3: Create a New Skill

If no existing skill covers what's needed, create one. A skill is a markdown file at .skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md.

Skill format:

---
name: <skill-name>
description: "<when to use this skill>"
---

# <Skill Title>

## When to Use
<Describe the trigger conditions>

## Steps
<Specific, actionable instructions with real file paths and commands>

## Verification
<How to verify the task was done correctly>

Good skills are:

• Actionable — specific commands, real file paths, decision trees (not vague documentation)
• Self-contained — all the info needed to complete the task, without requiring external searches
• Linked to live docs — for third-party services, link to their official docs rather than hardcoding API signatures that go stale
• Adapted to project conventions — use uv add not pip install, put services in backend/app/services/, use structured logging, etc.

Step 4: Adapt to SerpentStack Patterns

When following any external guide or community skill, adapt it to SerpentStack conventions:

• Python packages: use uv add not pip install
• Config/secrets: add to backend/app/config.py as a Pydantic settings class, set via env vars in .env
• Service layer: new integrations go in backend/app/services/, not in route handlers
• Route handlers: use async def with AsyncSession = Depends(get_db)
• Frontend API calls: add typed functions in frontend/src/api/, hooks in frontend/src/hooks/
• Logging: use get_logger(__name__) with structured JSON events

Example: Adding Stripe Integration

User asks: "I want to add Stripe payments."

1. Search: check Stripe's official Python SDK docs at https://docs.stripe.com/api
2. Install: cd backend && uv add stripe
3. Config: add STRIPE_SECRET_KEY and STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET to backend/app/config.py
4. Service: create backend/app/services/stripe.py with payment logic
5. Route: create backend/app/routes/payments.py with checkout and webhook endpoints
6. Create skill: write .skills/payments/SKILL.md documenting the integration for future agent sessions
7. Verify: run make test to ensure nothing broke

Skills Created by This Project

Add skills here as you create them.

Skill	What it does
(none yet)	Run make dev and start building!

Created a useful skill? Consider sharing it by opening a PR.