Add Seed Skills

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Editing QA skills in seed-skills/
• Getting them onto the live qaskills.sh catalog

Example prompts

• “add N new skills”
• “create a seed skill for X”
• “seed the database”
• “/add-seed-skills”

Workflow steps

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

1. 1Dedup the slug (directory name = slug)
2. 2Write seed-skills//SKILL.md
3. 3Validate every file
4. 4Seed PRODUCTION (the dangerous step)
5. 5Verify live (the only proof that counts)
6. 6Commit

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1d2a092. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • curl
  • pnpm
  • git
  • node
  • vercel

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

• Network

  Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

  • qaskills.sh

  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

Add Seed Skills loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 62 tokens; SKILL.md has 480 words of instructions outside code blocks.

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

~62

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

~1.4k

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

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:70

  **Never use the `DATABASE_URL` from `.env.local`.** It points at a stale non-prod database; seeding it changes nothing o

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:73

  . Get the prod URL: run `vercel env pull .env.vercel-prod --environment=production` yourself (worked from the agent as o

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:110

  `total` did not grow | Seeded the stale `.env.local` DB | Step 4.2, re-seed with the real prod URL |

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:116

  - Exporting DATABASE_URL from `.env.local` "because it is right there"

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); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from PramodDutta/qaskills at commit 1d2a092, republished under its MIT licence (© PramodDutta). 480 words, ~1,361 tokens.

name

add-seed-skills

description

Use when adding or editing QA skills in seed-skills/ or getting them onto the live qaskills.sh catalog, e.g. "add N new skills", "create a seed skill for X", "seed the database", "the skill page is empty", "skill 404s on the site".

---
name: Human Readable Skill Name
description: One line, 10-500 chars, what the skill teaches an agent to do.
version: 1.0.0
author: thetestingacademy
license: MIT
tags: [tag-one, tag-two]
testingTypes: [e2e]
frameworks: [playwright]
languages: [typescript]
domains: [web]
agents: [claude-code, cursor, github-copilot, windsurf, cline]
---

# Skill Title

Real instructions: principles, project structure, code samples, checklists.
This body becomes fullDescription: it renders on the skill page and is what
the CLI downloads. Aim for 100+ lines of substance; an empty or thin body
is a broken product page.

ls /Users/promode/qaskills/seed-skills | grep -i "<core-term>"
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' "https://qaskills.sh/api/skills/<slug>"   # want 404

cd /Users/promode/qaskills
pnpm --filter @qaskills/shared build && pnpm --filter @qaskills/skill-validator build
for d in <slug-one> <slug-two>; do
  node packages/skill-validator/dist/cli.js "seed-skills/$d/SKILL.md" || echo "INVALID: $d"
done

cd /Users/promode/qaskills
export DATABASE_URL='<prod-url-without-quotes>'
pnpm --filter @qaskills/web db:seed

curl -s 'https://qaskills.sh/api/skills?limit=1'                       # total must equal baseline + N
curl -s "https://qaskills.sh/api/skills/<slug>/content" | head -20     # frontmatter + body, not empty
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' "https://qaskills.sh/skills/thetestingacademy/<slug>"  # 200 (adjust author segment if different)

git -C /Users/promode/qaskills add seed-skills/<slug-one> seed-skills/<slug-two>
git -C /Users/promode/qaskills commit -m "feat(skills): add <N> <theme> seed skills"
git -C /Users/promode/qaskills push origin main

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

Files

Just SKILL.md in .claude/skills/add-seed-skills of PramodDutta/qaskills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1d2a092