Claude Code Skills Development

Reference for developing effective skills. The context window is a public good - only include information Claude doesn't already possess.

Core Principles

• Conciseness: Keep SKILL.md under 500 lines. Use progressive disclosure.
• Appropriate Freedom: Text for flexible tasks, pseudocode for moderate variation, scripts for error-prone operations.
• Cross-Model Testing: Validate across Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus.

Skill Structure