A collection of AI skills for research, strategy, writing, and communication. Each skill is a structured prompt file that instructs any AI assistant how to perform a specific task to a high standard. Skills are format-compatible with the Agent Skills open standard.

Skills

Using a skill

Each skill is a plain markdown file. There are two ways to use them.

Any AI assistant (generic)

Copy the contents of a SKILL.md into your conversation as a system prompt or prepend it to your message:

[paste contents of research/SKILL.md]

Now research: What are the second-order effects of LLM proliferation on knowledge work?

Or reference it via file attachment, context window upload, or however your tool accepts external context.

Tools with native SKILL.md support

Some AI coding tools discover and load skills automatically. Copy the skill directory into your tool's configured skills location:

Example:

cp -r research ~/.claude/skills/research

Once installed, invoke by name or let the tool trigger the skill automatically based on the description field in the frontmatter.

Repository structure

Skills/
├── README.md                          # This file
├── PRD.md                             # Project requirements and goals
├── CHANGELOG.md                       # What changed and when
├── PROGRESS.md                        # Session-by-session build journal
├── decisions/                         # Architecture Decision Records
│   └── 0001-adopt-skill-md-standard.md
├── adr/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── backlog-manager/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── citation-discipline/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── code-review/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── feedback/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── peer-reviewer/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── plain-language/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── remove-ai-slop/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── research/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── research-question/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── research-reviewer/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── speculation-control/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── strategic-persuasion/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── strategy-author/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── technical-writer/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── swe/
│   └── SKILL.md
└── tdd/
    └── SKILL.md

Creating a new skill

1. Create a directory: mkdir my-skill
2. Create SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter and a markdown body:

---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill does and when to use it. Tools that support
  automatic skill selection use this field to decide when to load the skill.
---

# Skill instructions here...

3. Test by pasting the content into any AI assistant with a relevant prompt.

See the Agent Skills open standard for the full specification.

Skill quality checklist

Use this to evaluate a skill before adding it or after making changes.

Frontmatter

• name matches the directory name
• version is present
• description is a single, precise sentence naming the task and when to trigger the skill — vague descriptions cause spurious auto-invocation in tools that support automatic skill selection

Sections (all must be present)

• ## When Not to Use — excludes clearly inappropriate contexts; at least two concrete exclusions
• ## Interaction Protocol — lists clarifying questions and specifies output style
• ## Inputs and Outputs — states input type, output type, and composability with other skills in this repo

Instruction quality

• Instructions are written as imperatives, not suggestions ("List all items" not "You should list all items")
• No vague verbs: "handle", "manage", "deal with", "consider" each replaced with a precise action
• Failure modes or stopping conditions are defined
• No AI slop patterns: no formulaic transitions ("Furthermore", "In conclusion"), no symmetrical filler paragraphs, no safety-prefacing language
• No implementation-specific references: no CLI commands, repo paths, file paths, or tool-specific syntax — skills must work with any agent and any repo

Verification

• Paste into an AI assistant with a realistic prompt and confirm the output matches the skill's stated intent

Related resources

Broader collections of skills and prompts that may contain further inspiration:

Contributing

Add new skills to the root of the repo as a named directory containing SKILL.md. Follow the format in "Creating a new skill" above. Update this README's index table and repository structure tree. Add a CHANGELOG entry.

Skills must be implementation-agnostic. Do not reference specific CLI commands, file paths, repo names, or tool-specific syntax in a SKILL.md. This repo is consumed as a git submodule by other repositories. A skill that references one repo's CLI will break silently when used in any other context. If you find yourself writing a path like Research/in-progress/ or a command like python -m src.main in a SKILL.md, stop — that content belongs in the consuming repo's prompt files, not in the skill.