My New Skill

<!-- Anthropic-shaped SKILL.md template. Copy this folder to skills/<your-name>/ and edit. Keep the body under ~150 lines — long bodies are a context tax on every turn where this skill is loaded.

Recommended structure:

1. One-paragraph statement of the failure mode this skill exists to prevent.
2. A short checklist or numbered procedure the agent should follow.
3. Red flags — the shortcuts an agent takes when it wants to skip this.
4. Evidence — a required before/after pair proving the skill actually

changes behaviour. Ships in the sibling evidence/ folder.

1. (optional) references/ sibling files with deeper material the skill

lazy-loads only when needed.

Do not include:

• Marketing copy.
• Duplicates of other skills (link, do not copy).
• Project-specific rules — those belong in .claude/rules/.

Frontmatter contract (validated by scripts/validate-skills + CI):

• name — kebab-case, unique across the repo, matches the directory name.
• description — one non-empty line, phrased as a trigger.
• Anything else is optional and not currently enforced.

-->

Without this skill, the agent tends to <failure mode>. This skill enforces <the alternative>.

Steps

1. <step>
2. <step>
3. <step>

Red flags — STOP

| Thought | Reality | |---|---| | "I've done this before, I don't need the checklist" | Skills evolve; re-read the current SKILL.md. | | "This case is simple" | Simple cases become complex mid-task. | | "The user didn't ask for this rigor" | The user asked for a working result. Rigor is how you get one. |

Evidence

Every skill ships with a real before/after pair proving it changes agent behaviour on a concrete task. Without this, the skill is a claim, not a tool.

• evidence/before.md — a verbatim snippet of what the agent does on a

representative task WITHOUT this skill loaded. Include the prompt, the agent's response, and what went wrong (or what got skipped).

• evidence/after.md — the same prompt with this skill loaded. Show the

changed behaviour and why it is better.

If you cannot produce a before/after pair, the skill is not ready to ship. Land it as a draft in a branch, gather the evidence, then merge.

References

• references/<topic>.md (only if needed; keep the body lightweight)