Skill Mastery: The Ultimate Guide

Combines three authoritative sources into a unified approach:

1. Official plugin-dev toolkit - Validation, patterns, AI-assisted creation
2. Community best practices - Token hierarchy, archetypes, advanced patterns
3. Official documentation - Current API fields, latest features

Mental Model: How Skills Actually Work

Skills use pure LLM reasoning for selection - no embeddings or keyword matching. Claude evaluates all skill descriptions via natural language understanding, making description quality critical.

Token Loading Hierarchy