Skill Design Guide

Comprehensive guide for designing, building, testing, and distributing Claude skills. Use when user wants to "create a skill", "build a skill", "write a SKILL.md", "design a workflow skill", "make an MCP skill", or asks about skill structure, frontmatter, trigger phrases, or skill best practices. Walks through the full lifecycle from use case definition to distribution.

11 stars 1 forksSkill & Plugin Authoring

Install

skills CLI (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and more)

npx skills add metaskills/skill-design-guide --skill skill-design-guide

Manual install

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/metaskills/skill-design-guide.git /tmp/skill-design-guide
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/skill-design-guide/. ~/.claude/skills/skill-design-guide

Personal skills live in ~/.claude/skills. Use .claude/skills in a project folder to share a skill with your team.

From the SKILL.md

# Skill Design Guide

Interactive guide for building Claude skills from scratch. Walks users through
the full lifecycle: use case definition, folder structure, frontmatter,
instructions, design patterns, testing, iteration, and distribution.

## What Is a Skill

A skill is a folder containing instructions that teach Claude how to handle
specific tasks or workflows. Instead of re-explaining preferences and processes
every conversation, skills teach Claude once.

**Required file:** `SKILL.md` — main instructions in Markdown with YAML frontmatter.

**Optional directories:**

- `scripts/` — executable code (Python, Bash, etc.)
- `references/` — documentation loaded as needed
- `assets/` — templates, fonts, icons used in output

**Progressive disclosure (three levels):**

1. YAML frontmatter — always loaded in system prompt. Tells Claude when to use the skill.
2. SKILL.md body — loaded when Claude thinks the skill is relevant. Full instructions.
3. Linked files — scripts, references, assets. Loaded only as needed.

**Three skill categories:**

1. Document and Asset Creation — consistent output (docs, presentations, code, designs)
2. Workflow Automation — multi-step processes with consistent methodology
3. MCP Enhancement — workflow guidance on top of MCP tool access

## Instructions

Guide the user through each step interactively. Ask clarifying questions
before moving to the next step. Do not rush — quality of each step matters
more than speed through the workflow.

Read the full skill on GitHub

Details

Skill name: skill-design-guide
Repository: metaskills/skill-design-guide
Repo updated: 14 February 2026

FAQ

What does the Skill Design Guide skill do?

How do I install the Skill Design Guide skill?

skills CLI (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and more): npx skills add metaskills/skill-design-guide --skill skill-design-guide. Skills go in ~/.claude/skills (personal) or .claude/skills (project), and Claude loads them automatically when a task matches the description.

Is Skill Design Guide popular?

It lives in metaskills/skill-design-guide, which has 11 GitHub stars and 1 forks.

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