Skill Designer

Design new Claude skills from structured idea specifications. Use when the skill auto-generation pipeline needs to produce a Claude CLI prompt that creates a complete skill directory (SKILL.md, references, scripts, tests) following repository conventions.

No API

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. When to Use
3. Prerequisites
4. Quick Start
5. Workflow
6. Resources

1. Overview

Generate a comprehensive Claude CLI prompt from a structured skill idea specification. The prompt instructs Claude to create a complete skill directory following repository conventions: SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter, reference documents, helper scripts, and test scaffolding.

2. When to Use

The skill auto-generation pipeline selects an idea from the backlog and needs a design prompt for claude -p
A developer wants to bootstrap a new skill from a JSON idea specification
Quality review of generated skills requires awareness of the scoring rubric

3. Prerequisites

Python 3.9+
No external API keys required
Reference files must exist under skills/skill-designer/references/

4. Quick Start

python3 skills/skill-designer/scripts/build_design_prompt.py \
  --idea-json /tmp/idea.json \
  --skill-name "my-new-skill" \
  --project-root .

5. Workflow

Step 1: Prepare Idea Specification

Accept a JSON file (--idea-json) containing:

title: Human-readable idea name
description: What the skill does
category: Skill category (e.g., trading-analysis, developer-tooling)

Accept a normalized skill name (--skill-name) that will be used as the directory name and YAML frontmatter name: field.

Step 2: Build Design Prompt

Run the prompt builder:

python3 skills/skill-designer/scripts/build_design_prompt.py \
  --idea-json /tmp/idea.json \
  --skill-name "my-new-skill" \
  --project-root .

The script:

Loads the idea JSON
Reads all three reference files (structure guide, quality checklist, template)
Lists existing skills (up to 20) to prevent duplication
Outputs a complete prompt to stdout

Step 3: Feed Prompt to Claude CLI

The calling pipeline pipes the prompt into claude -p:

python3 skills/skill-designer/scripts/build_design_prompt.py \
  --idea-json /tmp/idea.json \
  --skill-name "my-new-skill" \
  --project-root . \
| claude -p --allowedTools Read,Edit,Write,Glob,Grep

Step 4: Validate Output

After Claude creates the skill, verify:

skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md exists with correct frontmatter
Directory structure follows conventions
Score with dual-axis-skill-reviewer meets threshold

6. Resources

References:

skills/skill-designer/references/quality-checklist.md
skills/skill-designer/references/skill-structure-guide.md
skills/skill-designer/references/skill-template.md

Scripts:

skills/skill-designer/scripts/build_design_prompt.py