Pointer stub. The canonical standard is chwezi-dev-engine/skills/sdlc-meta/skill-writing (canonical on GitHub; local path C:\wamp64\www\chwezi-dev-engine\skills\sdlc-meta\skill-writing\SKILL.md). Load it first; this file keeps a portable minimum and this engine's delta.

Use When

Creating or normalising a skill for a repeatable business-planning, advisory, finance, pitch or execution workflow.

Do Not Use When

Use skill-safety-audit instead for a read-only safety inspection; use the domain skill when the task is to produce a plan artefact.

Required Inputs

Artefact	Source/provider	Required?	If absent
Reusable problem, trigger prompts and neighbour descriptions	Requester and live catalogue	Yes	Stop; search the catalogue before drafting.
Canonical skill-writing standard	chwezi-dev-engine checkout or GitHub	Yes	Apply the portable minimum and mark canonical-only checks `NOT ASSESSED`.

Workflow

Read the canonical standard, then this engine's delta; inspect the closest neighbours.
Write the input, output, evidence, capability, degraded-mode and decision contracts before the procedure.
Run python -X utf8 scripts/validate_skill_engine.py --baseline docs/quality/skill-quality-baseline.json and python -X utf8 scripts/routing_smoke_test.py, then python -X utf8 skills/meta-utility/skill-writing/scripts/quick_validate.py <skill-dir>.
Stop on any finding or routing collision; recover by fixing the named contract and rerun, never by weakening the gate.

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Acceptance condition
Skill directory and routing fixtures	Maintainer and router	Validators pass and the expected skill ranks in the top three.

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Artefact and format	Consumer	Acceptance condition
Validation and routing record	Command output	Release owner	Zero findings; unrun checks marked `NOT ASSESSED`.

Quality Standards

Portable minimum, applied even when the canonical is unreachable: frontmatter uses only approved keys and name matches the folder.
The description starts Use when, stays within 350 characters and names a neighbour, with no workflow steps.
SKILL.md stays within 500 lines; deep detail sits in references one level deep, linked directly.
Every new or changed skill gets positive, negative and collision routing fixtures.
Bundled scripts run through their interpreter, for example python -X utf8 scripts/<name>.py.
No book extractions or copied third-party text; paraphrase and attribute.
British English, the imperative mood, and NOT ASSESSED for any check not run.

Engine-Local Delta

Draft from the dual-compatible skill template and respect the dual-surface migration rules; inventory skills/ and country-context/ for neighbours.
Verify financial figures, thresholds and accounting treatments, or assign them to professional review under the finance engine; apply anti-ai-slop while writing and ai-slop-audit before release.

Capability Contract

Read and search are required. Editing files and running validators need explicit permission for the authoring task; publishing, deletion and release changes need separate authorisation.

Degraded Mode

If the canonical standard is unavailable, apply the portable minimum, return the narrowest qualified result, and mark each canonical-only check NOT ASSESSED; never report it as passed.

Decision Rules

Condition	Action	Failure or risk avoided
An existing skill owns the trigger and output	Normalise it in place; put branch-only detail in a linked reference	Duplicate routes and oversized entrypoints

Anti-Patterns

Copying the canonical body into this engine. Fix: link the canonical and keep only the delta here.
Writing only positive triggers. Fix: name the neighbour and add a collision fixture.
Treating an unrun validator as a pass. Fix: record NOT ASSESSED with the reason.
Granting edit rights to a review procedure. Fix: default review and audit to read-only.
Weakening a baseline to clear a finding. Fix: repair the named contract instead.

Worked Example

Asked for a lender-readiness review skill, first search meta-bankability-scoring, 11-funding-request and meta-accounting-finance-review; update the owner that already scores bankability instead of adding a duplicate reviewer.

skill-writing

Skill Writing