Agent skill

Design Workflow

by rome-os in rome-os/rome

Turn a guardian's plain-language automation into a runnable Rome workflow app, in one conversation.

MITAuto-check passedWriting & Content

Install Design Workflow

skills CLI
$ npx skills add rome-os/rome --skill design-workflow -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install rome-os/rome design-workflow --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rome-os/rome.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/rome_apps/workflow-studio/src/skills/design-workflow .claude/skills/design-workflow && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
design-workflow
GitHub stars
725
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
807 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
18
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Turn a guardian's plain-language automation into a runnable Rome workflow app, in one conversation.

  • Works in 3 steps: Shape the idea into a spec → Get approval → Build it
  • The guardian wants to build
  • SKILL.md covers Phase 1 — Shape the idea into…, Phase 2 — Get approval and Phase 3 — Build it
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Design Workflow is an agent skill from rome-os/rome. Turn a guardian's plain-language automation into a runnable Rome workflow app, in one conversation. Use whenever the guardian wants to build, create, set up, or design an automation or workflow ("every morning summarize my unread emails", "when I save a link, fetch and summarize it", "for each new ticket, look up the customer and draft a reply"). You shape the idea into a short spec, get the guardian's approval, then build and install the workflow yourself — no separate planner or builder.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Writing & Content, covering Plain language and style rules. The repository describes itself as: A compounding agent OS for recursive agents. Also an open source alternative to Grok Bot and Meta's Muse. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • The guardian wants to build
  • Design an automation
  • Workflow (every morning summarize my unread emails
  • Fetch and summarize it

Example prompts

  • “every morning summarize my unread emails”
  • “when I save a link, fetch and summarize it”
  • “for each new ticket, look up the customer and draft a reply”
  • “/design-workflow”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Shape the idea into a spec
  2. Get approval
  3. Build it

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit ed26d88. 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

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    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

Design Workflow loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 128 tokens; SKILL.md has 807 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~128
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

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

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 rome-os/rome at commit ed26d88, republished under its MIT licence (© rome-os). 807 words, ~1,400 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/design-workflow/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
design-workflow
description
Turn a guardian's plain-language automation into a runnable Rome workflow app, in one conversation. Use whenever the guardian wants to build, create, set up, or design an automation or workflow ("every morning summarize my unread emails", "when I save a link, fetch and summarize it", "for each new ticket, look up the customer and draft a reply"). You shape the idea into a short spec, get the guardian's approval, then build and install the workflow yourself — no separate planner or builder.
tools
Read, Edit, Bash

Design a workflow

The guardian described an automation. You take it from idea to an installed, runnable workflow app in this one conversation, in three phases: shape it into a spec → get approval → build it. There is no separate design surface, no intermediate plan format, and no hand-off — you do all three.

Phase 1 — Shape the idea into a spec

Turn what the guardian said into a short, plain-language spec they can read and sign off on. The spec is the thing they approve, so write it for a non-technical reader — what the automation does, not how it's coded. Use this shape:

Trigger — what kicks it off (a schedule, an event, a "run now"). Steps — the ordered things it does, one short verb phrase each ("fetch my unread emails", "summarize them", "post the digest to my chat"). Decisions — any branch ("if the total is over $5k, escalate; otherwise file it"), stated as plain conditions. Per-item work — anything done "for each" of a list ("for each ticket, rate its severity"). Delivers — the final step that sends, posts, saves, or shows the result.

Hold these disciplines while you shape it — they decide whether the spec is real:

  • Ask the guardian for facts only they can supply; never invent them. A threshold amount, a recipient, a channel, which account, which event fires the trigger — a made-up "$5,000" looks authoritative and gets approved by accident. When a fact like this is missing, ask for it in your reply rather than guessing.
  • Resolve design questions in conversation, not in the spec. Anything that changes the shape — whether to branch, what to do per item — gets settled with the guardian before you present the spec, not parked as an open question in it.
  • Every workflow must deliver. A spec that only fetches and computes, with no step that sends/posts/saves/shows a result, has no destination and is never finished. If the guardian didn't say where the result goes, that's a fact to ask for (see above).
  • Don't let vague quantifiers pass. "the top labs", "the latest news", "key themes", "top outlets" each hide a fact — how many, which sources, what time window. If it changes what the automation does, pin it down with the guardian.
  • Keep it statically structured. The full space of what it does must be knowable before it runs: ordered steps, parallel work, a decision, or bounded per-item fan-out. No "keep polling until…", no unbounded loops.

Keep the spec itself conversational and free of technical artifacts — no JSON, no flow chart, no node/combinator vocabulary. Talk about what it will do.

Phase 2 — Get approval

Present the spec and ask the guardian to approve it or tell you what to change. Make the ask explicit ("Want me to build this, or change anything first?"). If they ask for a change, revise the spec and ask again. Build only after a clear yes — don't start scaffolding on a maybe.

Show full SKILL.md (324 more words)Show less

Phase 3 — Build it

On approval, build the workflow into a new, runnable Rome app. Load the coding:workflow_creation skill and follow it end to end — it owns the real work: deriving the control flow, scaffolding the workflow template, authoring src/workflow/definition.ts in plain TypeScript (await/if/for/Promise.all), the system:summon discipline for generative steps, the connector:connector_proxy discipline for SaaS calls, the ctx.dryRun guard on every write, the display envelope, the web surface, and the install. Translate the approved spec into its control flow faithfully — don't redesign the automation while coding it.

Two cautions specific to building from an approved spec, beyond what coding:workflow_creation already covers:

  • Build first, connect after. The toolkits you can use are listed in your context, so don't probe to discover them and don't gate the build on whether an account is connected yet. Build and install the workflow, then name the toolkits it needs and ask the guardian to connect any that aren't — it's ready to run once they do. Never fake a connection or swap in fixture data to dodge a missing one.
  • Never fan a system:summon call across a map or parallel. A generative step that runs per-item is fine as a per-item system:summon call; what's forbidden is structuring the flow so one system:summon call is itself spread across the fan-out. If the approved spec seems to require that, surface it as a problem rather than rewriting the plan silently.

The guardian is watching this session live, so narrate as you go: one plain, friendly sentence per step ("Setting up the app…", "Wiring the email step…", "Installing it now…") — not file paths, JSON, or technical artifacts.

You're done when the app is actually installed. Tell the guardian plainly what you built, then point them at any toolkits they still need to connect for it to run. If you hit a real blocker — a spec that can't be implemented as written — say what's wrong and stop; never claim it's built when it isn't.

© rome-os, 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 rome_apps/workflow-studio/src/skills/design-workflow of rome-os/rome.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit ed26d88

Compare with similar skills

Design Workflow next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Design Workflow compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Design Workflow this skillrome-os/rome725—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Asd Ste100danyuchn/asd-ste100-skill4k—~4.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Simple Issue Descriptionevery-app/open-seo23k1 repos~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Ponytail AuditDietrichGebert/ponytail158k—~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Technical Writing Standardcursor/plugins10k10 repos~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Natural Japanese Business Writingcoji/natural-japanese1.9k—~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Questions about Design Workflow

What does Design Workflow do?

Turn a guardian's plain-language automation into a runnable Rome workflow app, in one conversation. Design Workflow is an agent skill from rome-os/rome. Turn a guardian's plain-language automation into a runnable Rome workflow app, in one conversation.

When should I use Design Workflow?

Design Workflow fits situations like: the guardian wants to build; design an automation; workflow (every morning summarize my unread emails; fetch and summarize it.

How do I install Design Workflow in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add rome-os/rome --skill design-workflow -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (rome_apps/workflow-studio/src/skills/design-workflow in rome-os/rome) into .claude/skills/design-workflow in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Design Workflow in Codex?

Run `npx skills add rome-os/rome --skill design-workflow -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (rome_apps/workflow-studio/src/skills/design-workflow in rome-os/rome) into .agents/skills/design-workflow in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Design Workflow in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add rome-os/rome --skill design-workflow -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/design-workflow, .gemini/skills/design-workflow, .github/skills/design-workflow and .opencode/skills/design-workflow in your project.

What does Design Workflow need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Design Workflow is instructions for the agent only.

Does Design Workflow access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Design Workflow safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Design Workflow use?

Design Workflow is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Design Workflow use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Design Workflow?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Design Workflow: Asd Ste100 (danyuchn/asd-ste100-skill, 4k stars), Simple Issue Description (every-app/open-seo, 23k stars), Ponytail Audit (DietrichGebert/ponytail, 158k stars) and Technical Writing Standard (cursor/plugins, 10k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Design Workflow?

rome-os (a GitHub organization) maintains it in rome-os/rome, which has 725 GitHub stars. The repository holds 18 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 8, 2026.

Source: rome-os/rome on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.