Tool Design
This skill should be used for the tool-interface layer of an agent system specifically: writing tool descriptions agents can route on, designing tool schemas and response formats, naming conventions, actionable error recovery messages, MCP server design, tool-set consolidation, and deciding when to add or remove an individual tool. Use this when the unit of work is a single tool or a set of tools. Route project-shape, pipeline architecture, and task-model-fit decisions to project-development; route deciding whether to introduce sub-agents to multi-agent-patterns.
Install
npx skills add muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering --skill tool-designgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering.git /tmp/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering/skills/tool-design ~/.claude/skills/tool-designPersonal skills live in ~/.claude/skills. Use .claude/skills in a project folder to share a skill with your team.
From the SKILL.md
# Tool Design for Agents Design every tool as a contract between a deterministic system and a non-deterministic agent. Unlike human-facing APIs, agent-facing tools must make the contract unambiguous through the description alone: agents infer intent from descriptions and generate calls that must match expected formats. Every ambiguity becomes a potential failure mode that no amount of prompt engineering can fix. The unit of work for this skill is a single tool or a tool catalog. Project-shape, pipeline architecture, task-model-fit, and cost-at-the-project-level decisions belong to `project-development`. Deciding whether to introduce sub-agents belongs to `multi-agent-patterns`. This skill owns the interface layer that connects deterministic code to the agent. ## When to Activate Activate this skill when the unit of work is a tool: - Writing a new tool description, schema, or response format. - Debugging cases where the agent picked the wrong tool or generated malformed calls. - Consolidating an overlapping tool catalog (the classic "we have 17 tools, the agent picks wrong half the time" case). - Designing actionable error messages so the agent can self-correct. - Naming tools and parameters consistently across a catalog (MCP namespacing, verb-noun naming). - Evaluating a third-party tool against the consolidation principle before adding it. Do not activate this skill for adjacent work owned by other skills:
Details
- Skill name
tool-design- Path
skills/tool-design/SKILL.md- License
- MIT
- Repo updated
- 12 October 2026
FAQ
What does the Tool Design skill do?
This skill should be used for the tool-interface layer of an agent system specifically: writing tool descriptions agents can route on, designing tool schemas and response formats, naming conventions, actionable error recovery messages, MCP server design, tool-set consolidation, and deciding when to add or remove an individual tool. Use this when the unit of work is a single tool or a set of tools. Route project-shape, pipeline architecture, and task-model-fit decisions to project-development; route deciding whether to introduce sub-agents to multi-agent-patterns.
How do I install the Tool Design skill?
skills CLI (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and more): npx skills add muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering --skill tool-design. Skills go in ~/.claude/skills (personal) or .claude/skills (project), and Claude loads them automatically when a task matches the description.
Is Tool Design popular?
It lives in muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering, which has 18,259 GitHub stars and 1,508 forks, and is included in 3 curated skill lists.
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