ping-skill-writing
Ping Skill Writing
Structure, formatting, and content guidance for distributable plugin skills. Use alongside any general-purpose skill-authoring skill.
Structure
Start from assets/templates/SKILL.template.md. Default to one skill per domain, not one per product or activity — keep the number of skills low. SKILL.md is a router: routing tables progressively disclose product- and activity-specific detail from references/ files, so each skill's coverage grows through its references rather than by adding skills.
references/ is a plain tree of maintained content — every file in it is shipped and kept current. There is no "curated" or staging tier.
After any change, run python3 scripts/validate_skills.py --root . — it enforces the skill frontmatter schema (description 50–500 chars), name: matching the directory, SKILL.md ≤ 160 lines, and resolution of inline references/... routing links.
Rules
Keep the description: between 50 and 500 characters
The description is the trigger surface every agent routes on, at a standing context cost in every session. Keep 50–500 chars, packing the highest-value routing tokens (product names, protocols, error strings) and cutting anything an agent could infer from the task itself.