writing-skills
Writing Skills
Overview
Writing skills IS Test-Driven Development applied to process documentation.
Personal skills are written to ~/.claude/skills
You write test cases (pressure scenarios with subagents), watch them fail (baseline behavior), write the skill (documentation), watch tests pass (agents comply), and refactor (close loopholes).
Core principle: If you didn't watch an agent fail without the skill, you don't know if the skill teaches the right thing.
REQUIRED BACKGROUND: You MUST understand superpowers:test-driven-development before using this skill. That skill defines the fundamental RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle. This skill adapts TDD to documentation.
Official guidance: For Anthropic's official skill authoring best practices, see anthropic-best-practices.md. This document provides additional patterns and guidelines that complement the TDD-focused approach in this skill.
What is a Skill?
A skill is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Skills help future Claude instances find and apply effective approaches.
More from wln/obra-superpowers
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Use when creating or developing anything, before writing code or implementation plans - refines rough ideas into fully-formed designs through structured Socratic questioning, alternative exploration, and incremental validation
8sharing-skills
Use when you've developed a broadly useful skill and want to contribute it upstream via pull request - guides process of branching, committing, pushing, and creating PR to contribute skills back to upstream repository
6using-superpowers
Use when starting any conversation - establishes mandatory workflows for finding and using skills, including using Skill tool before announcing usage, following brainstorming before coding, and creating TodoWrite todos for checklists
6writing-plans
Use when design is complete and you need detailed implementation tasks for engineers with zero codebase context - creates comprehensive implementation plans with exact file paths, complete code examples, and verification steps assuming engineer has minimal domain knowledge
5executing-plans
Use when partner provides a complete implementation plan to execute in controlled batches with review checkpoints - loads plan, reviews critically, executes tasks in batches, reports for review between batches
5systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes - four-phase framework (root cause investigation, pattern analysis, hypothesis testing, implementation) that ensures understanding before attempting solutions
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