Agent skill · writing content · erichowens
skill-architect
Design, create, audit, and improve Claude Agent Skills with expert-level progressive disclosure. Use when building new skills, reviewing existing skills, debugging activation failures, encoding
Why this skill is useful
Adds a structured framework for creating and auditing agent skills, including specific guidelines and architectural patterns that enhance skill effectiveness.
What it needs
About 10k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-14. 180 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Skill Architect: The Authoritative Meta-Skill The unified authority for creating expert-level Agent Skills. Encodes the knowledge that separates a skill that merely exists from one that activates precisely, teaches efficiently, and makes users productive immediately. Philosophy Great skills are progressive disclosure machines. They encode real domain expertise (shibboleths), not surface instructions. They follow a three-layer architecture: lightweight metadata for discovery, lean SKILL.md for core process, and reference files for deep dives loaded only on demand. --- When to Use This Skill Creating new skills from scratch or from existing expertise Auditing/reviewing skills for quality, activation, and progressive disclosure Improving activation rates and reducing false positives Encoding domain expertise (shibboleths, anti-patterns, temporal knowledge) Designing skills that subagents consume effectively Building self-contained tools (scripts, MCPs, subagents) Debugging why skills don't activate or activate incorrectly NOT for: General Claude Code features (slash commands, MCP server implementation), non-skill coding advice or code review, debugging runtime errors (use domain-specific skills), template generation without real domain expertise to encode. --- Quick Wins (Immediate Improvements) For existing skills, apply in priority order: 1. Tighten description -- Follow [What] [When to use]. NOT for [Exclusions] formula 2. Check line count -- SKILL.md must be <500 lines; move depth to /references 3. Add NOT clause -- Prevent false activation with explicit exclusions 4. Add 1-2 anti-patterns -- Use shibboleth template (Novice/Expert/Timeline) 5. Remove dead files -- Delete unreferenced files in scripts/ and references/ (no phantoms) 6. Test activation -- Write 5 queries that should trigger and 5 that shouldn't --- Progressive Disclosure Architecture Skills use three-layer loading. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills erichowens/skill-architect--a92b80