Writing great skills

A skill exists to wrangle predictability from a stochastic system: the agent should take the same justified process across runs even though wording and intermediate reasoning vary.

Start with the behavioral delta

Before writing prose, state:

• Purpose: the one outcome this skill owns;
• Trigger: observable request shapes that should invoke it;
• Inputs: context or artifacts required to proceed;
• Branches: materially different paths through the workflow;
• Completion: evidence that distinguishes done from plausible-looking progress;
• Non-ownership: adjacent actions or state mutations owned elsewhere.

If these cannot fit in a short paragraph, split the concept before drafting the skill.

Choose invocation deliberately