Skill Coach

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Tasks that involve Hooks and plugins

Example prompts

• “Use the skill-coach skill to guide creation of high-quality Agent Skills with domain expertise, anti-pattern detection, and progressive disclosure…”
• “/skill-coach”

Requirements

• Python 3
• Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Bash(python:*)

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

1. 1Understand with Concrete Examples
2. 2Plan Reusable Contents
3. 3Initialize the Skill
4. 4Write SKILL.md
5. 5Validate and Package
6. 6Iterate

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 6713fc7. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

  • Read
  • Write
  • Edit
  • Glob
  • Grep
  • Bash(python:*)

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Ships 1 file in scripts/ (Python, from the files we listed), which the agent can run.

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • python

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  No URLs in SKILL.md.

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Skill Coach loads about 2.5k tokens when it runs, and up to ~18k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 95 tokens; SKILL.md has 781 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~95

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~2.5k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~18k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from curiositech/some_claude_skills at commit 6713fc7, republished under its MIT licence (© curiositech). 781 words, ~2,529 tokens.

name

skill-coach

description

Guides creation of high-quality Agent Skills with domain expertise, anti-pattern detection, and progressive disclosure best practices. Activate on keywords: create skill, review skill, skill quality, skill best practices, skill anti-patterns, improve skill, skill audit. NOT for general coding advice, slash commands, MCP development, or non-skill Claude Code features.

allowed-tools

Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Bash(python:*)

metadata.category

Productivity & Meta

metadata.tags

skills, quality, anti-patterns, best-practices, review

❌ Bad: "Helps with images"
⚠️ Better: "Image processing with CLIP"
✅ Good: "CLIP semantic search. Use for image-text matching.
   Activate on 'CLIP', 'embeddings'. NOT for counting, spatial reasoning."

---
name: your-skill-name
description: [What] [When] [Triggers]. NOT for [Exclusions].
allowed-tools: Read,Write  # Minimal only
---

# Skill Name
[One sentence purpose]

## When to Use
✅ Use for: [A, B, C]
❌ NOT for: [D, E, F]

## Core Instructions
[Step-by-step, decision trees, not templates]

## Common Anti-Patterns
### [Pattern]
**Symptom**: [Recognition]
**Problem**: [Why wrong]
**Solution**: [Better approach]

# ❌ WRONG - These will break skill upload
integrates_with:
  - orchestrator
triggers:
  - "activate on this"
tools: Read,Write
outputs: formatted text
coordinates_with: other-skill
python_dependencies:
  - numpy

## Integrations
Works with: orchestrator, team-builder

## Activation Triggers
Responds to: "create skill", "review skill", "skill quality"

# Find invalid frontmatter keys
for skill in .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md; do
  sed -n '/^---$/,/^---$/p' "$skill" | grep -E "^[a-zA-Z_-]+:" | cut -d: -f1 | \
    grep -vE "^(name|description|license|allowed-tools|metadata)$" && \
    echo "  ^ in $(basename $(dirname $skill))"
done

your-skill/
└── SKILL.md           # Core instructions (max 500 lines)

├── scripts/           # Working code - NOT templates
├── mcp-server/        # Custom MCP if external APIs needed
├── agents/            # Subagent definitions if orchestration needed
├── references/        # Deep dives on domain knowledge
└── CHANGELOG.md       # Version history

your-skill/
├── SKILL.md           # Core instructions (max 500 lines)
├── scripts/           # Working code - NOT templates
├── references/        # Deep dives on domain knowledge
└── assets/            # Files used in output (templates, icons)

# Validate skill structure and content
python scripts/validate_skill.py <path>

# Check for self-contained tool completeness
python scripts/check_self_contained.py <path>

Skill not activating when expected?
├── Check description has specific keywords
│   ├── NO → Add "Activate on: keyword1, keyword2"
│   └── YES → Check if query contains those keywords
│       ├── NO → Add missing keyword variations
│       └── YES → Check for conflicting NOT clause
│           ├── YES → Narrow exclusion scope
│           └── NO → Check file structure
│               ├── SKILL.md missing → Create it
│               └── Wrong location → Move to .claude/skills/

Skill activating when it shouldn't?
├── Missing NOT clause?
│   ├── YES → Add "NOT for: exclusion1, exclusion2"
│   └── NO → NOT clause too narrow
│       └── Expand exclusions based on false positive queries

© curiositech, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 19 other files (scripts, references) in .claude/skills/skill-coach of curiositech/some_claude_skills.

• SKILL.md
• .claude-plugin/plugin.json
• CHANGELOG.md
• DEPRECATED.md
• OVERVIEW.md
• README.md
• examples/good/clip-aware-embeddings/SKILL_.md
• examples/good/clip-aware-embeddings/scripts/validate_clip_usage.py
• references/antipatterns.md
• references/mcp_vs_scripts.md
• references/scoring-rubric.md
• references/self-contained-tools.md
• references/shibboleths.md
• references/skill-composition.md
• references/skill-lifecycle.md
• … and 5 more

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 6713fc7