assistant-skill-creator

Skill Creator

Goal

Create compact, contract-backed V1 skills with precise routing, typed boundaries, safe fallback behavior, and offline validation.

Success Criteria

• The skill uses the correct Process, Analysis, or Utility contract tier.
• Root instructions state Goal, Success Criteria, Constraints, Output, and Stop Rules.
• Missing inputs ask only when outcome-shaping and otherwise infer, skip, or fail.
• Evals cover positive routing plus a false-positive or unsafe behavior case.

Constraints

• Keep root SKILL.md concise and move detail to on-demand references.
• Analysis and Utility skills do not gain subagent handoffs.
• Memory, metrics, automation, subagents, external tools, and state paths stay optional/configurable and policy-gated unless the skill explicitly owns them.
• Keep examples agent-agnostic and free of secrets, private endpoints, customer data, and workplace-specific confidential details.

Progressive Contract Loading

Canonical tier files are contracts/input.yaml, contracts/output.yaml, and contracts/phase-gates.yaml.

Read contracts/index.yaml first and load only the active boundary:

• entry for purpose, category, triggers, dependencies, policy, and existing path;
• current_phase for CAPTURE, DESIGN, VERIFIED_DISTILLATION, BUILD, or VALIDATE;
• contract_design for ordinary contract design;
• harness_design only for loop-based Process skills;
• verified_distillation only when promoting a completed workflow/lesson;
• validation only for the final checklist; and
• completion only for the artifact being returned.

Missing or invalid selectors fall back to the full named canonical contract. Do not load every contract or reference at entry.

The skill-local contract guide is generated from docs/skill-contract-design-guide.md; edit the docs source, then run tools/skills/sync-skill-contract-guide.sh --apply.

Ownership

assistant-skill-creator owns skill contract design, routing precision, and contract validation. Generic workflow may coordinate file edits and review, but specialist gates are authoritative.

Phases

CAPTURE

Resolve name, purpose, category, triggers, dependencies, policy constraints, and effort. Existing skill shortcut: when existing_skill_path exists, read the current skill and proceed to DESIGN without asking for captured facts again.

Contract tiers:

• Utility: input + output
• Analysis: input + output + phase-gates
• Process: input + output + phase-gates + handoffs

DESIGN

Load contract_design. Define typed input/output fields, recovery actions, binary phase gates, invariants, and matching handoffs where applicable. Present new or materially changed contract design for user review before BUILD. A small, reversible existing-skill edit may proceed when direction is already explicit.

For a Process skill with multi-round review, QA, optimization, or restart loops, load harness_design and apply references/harness-patterns.md: bounded rounds, rubric/score progression, drift/stagnation handling, separate generation and evaluation, and explicit completion/pivot artifacts.

VERIFIED_DISTILLATION

When turning a completed workflow or lesson into a reusable skill, load verified_distillation. Require distillation_verification with verifier_result: approved before writing. Remove task progress, PR numbers, secrets, logs, and stale facts; otherwise return a revision checklist.

BUILD

Create skills/<name>/SKILL.md, required tier contracts, and focused evals. Keep canonical contract headers and descriptions precise. Reuse repository templates; add references only when they reduce root load.

VALIDATE

Load validation; run the 13 contract design guide rules plus company-safety, source validation, eval validation, sync checks, and relevant P0-P4 contracts. Fix failures before reporting VALIDATE COMPLETE.

Output

Return status, changed files, contract tier/summary, validation evidence, policy-safety summary, and unresolved gaps.

Stop Rules

• Stop when purpose/category ambiguity changes contract shape.
• Stop before skill work if the canonical contract guide was not read.
• Stop before BUILD when required design approval or verified distillation is absent.
• Stop before completion when contracts, evals, validation, or generated sync fail.