Skill iterate

Skill dokipen/claude-cadence/skills/skill-iterate

Evaluate, benchmark, and iteratively improve an existing Claude Code skill using Anthropic's skill-creator tooling. Use when a skill draft already exists and the user wants to measure trigger accuracy, run quantitative evals, review output quality, or optimize the skill description. Do NOT use this for creating a skill from scratch — use create-skill for that.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add dokipen/claude-cadence --skill skill-iterate

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

1 stars1 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

3.7 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Skill Iterate

Drives the eval → review → rewrite loop for an existing skill using Anthropic's open-source skill-creator.

This skill is the second phase of skill development. create-skill handles the cadence-specific bootstrap (directory layout, frontmatter, required sections). This skill handles everything after the first draft exists.

Filesystem Scope

IMPORTANT: See the Filesystem Scope section in CLAUDE.md.

Prerequisites

The skill being iterated must already have:

A SKILL.md with valid frontmatter (name, description)
A ## Filesystem Scope section (cadence requirement — must survive each iteration)

Step 1: Detect skill-creator install

Check for an existing install in this order:

if [ -d ".claude/skills/skill-creator" ]; then
  SKILL_CREATOR_DIR=".claude/skills/skill-creator"
elif [ -d ".agents/skills/skill-creator" ]; then
  SKILL_CREATOR_DIR=".agents/skills/skill-creator"
else
  SKILL_CREATOR_DIR=""
fi
echo "${SKILL_CREATOR_DIR:-NOT_FOUND}"

If not found, offer to install it:

bash skills/skill-iterate/scripts/install-skill-creator.sh

The installer defaults to .claude/skills/skill-creator/ and pins to a known-good upstream commit. After running, set SKILL_CREATOR_DIR=".claude/skills/skill-creator".

Step 2: Run the eval/iterate loop

The upstream skill-creator drives the loop. Point it at the skill under development:

Entry point: $SKILL_CREATOR_DIR/SKILL.md

The loop covers:

Create or review test prompts for the skill
Run Claude-with-skill on the test prompts (scripts/run_eval.py)
Review results qualitatively with eval-viewer/generate_review.py
Review quantitative metrics (variance analysis via scripts/aggregate_benchmark.py)
Rewrite the skill based on evaluation feedback
Repeat until quality bar is met
Run description improver (scripts/improve_description.py) to optimize trigger accuracy

Refer to $SKILL_CREATOR_DIR/SKILL.md for full workflow instructions.

Step 3: Post-iterate validation (cadence invariants)

After each iteration of the skill being improved, verify cadence-required sections are intact:

# Check ## Filesystem Scope is present
grep -q "## Filesystem Scope" skills/<name>/SKILL.md && echo "OK" || echo "MISSING"

# Check frontmatter has name and description
grep -q "^name:" skills/<name>/SKILL.md && echo "name: OK" || echo "name: MISSING"
grep -q "^description:" skills/<name>/SKILL.md && echo "description: OK" || echo "description: MISSING"

If ## Filesystem Scope was dropped by the rewrite, restore it immediately:

## Filesystem Scope

> **IMPORTANT:** See the **Filesystem Scope** section in `CLAUDE.md`.

Place it as the first ## section after the # title.

Layout reference

skills/<name>/
├── SKILL.md            ← the skill being iterated
└── scripts/            ← co-located scripts (cadence convention)

.claude/skills/skill-creator/   ← upstream tooling (vendored by install script)
├── SKILL.md
├── agents/             ← analyzer.md, comparator.md, grader.md
├── eval-viewer/        ← generate_review.py
├── scripts/            ← run_eval.py, improve_description.py, aggregate_benchmark.py
└── references/