Templates

Skill Name

Purpose

What this makes possible, and — more usefully — what failure it prevents. Two or three sentences. Do not paraphrase the title.

When to Use

Concrete situations, phrased as a user would describe them. Not "when performing database optimization" but "a query is slow and you do not know why".

• Situation one.
• Situation two.
• Situation three.

Capabilities

What the skill actually covers. A short list. This is scope, not marketing.

• Capability one.
• Capability two.

Inputs

What the skill needs in order to be useful. Be specific: "the actual execution plan, not a guess about it".

• Input one.
• Input two.

Outputs

What the user gets. Concrete artifacts, not "improved code quality".

• Output one.
• Output two.

Workflow

Numbered steps, in the order they must happen. The order is usually the most important thing in the skill — measure before optimizing, reproduce before fixing, validate before trusting.

1. Step name — What to do, and why this step comes first.
2. Step name — What to do.
3. Step name — What to do.

Best Practices

Rules, with consequences. Not preferences. Each line must earn its place — if it could appear in any skill, cut it.

• A rule stated as a rule, with the reason it matters.
• The specific way people get this wrong, named.
• A default that is safe, and why the alternative is not.

Examples

Real, runnable code, or a worked case. Show the failure alongside the fix — the wrong version teaches more than the right one alone. Never a toy example, never an elided ... where the difficult part should be.

What the mistake looks like:

// The wrong version, with a comment naming exactly what is wrong.

What to do instead:

// The right version. It should be obvious why it is better.

Notes

The non-obvious. Version caveats. The trap that catches everyone. The thing a competent practitioner would not already know.

If this section is generic, the skill is probably not worth including — an author who cannot name a surprising detail usually has not worked with the subject long enough to write about it.

• A version-specific caveat.
• A trap, and why it is so common.
• A pointer to the adjacent skill, where the boundary is genuinely fuzzy.