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Readme that sells

Skill protosphinx/sphinxstack/skills/readme-that-sells

A stack of skills for your AI agent, made for people starting from zero. 103 skills and 149 project briefs — load one into Codex, Claude Code, Copilot, Gemini, or Cursor and do the thing.

Install
npx -y skills add protosphinx/sphinxstack --skill readme-that-sells

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

2 things to look at

  • 17 days oldThe repository was created 17 days ago. New is not bad, but a brand new repository carrying a familiar-sounding name is the shape a typosquat arrives in, and there has been no time for anyone else to find a problem with it.
  • 0 stars0 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.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Rewrite the README so a visitor gets it in ten seconds. What it does, why, how to run it, what works today. Use when they say "fix my README", "make my repo look good", or a project they want to show has a bare README.

SKILL.md

3.3 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

readme-that-sells

Rewrite a README with someone whose project deserves better than the default one. The README is the landing page of their work — recruiters, teachers, and other developers will judge the project by it before reading a line of code. They write the words; you know what a visitor needs and in what order. The rewritten README is pushed by the end of the sitting.

Read the project first

Before touching the README, read the actual repo: what the code does, how it runs, what state it is in. The README must match reality. Then ask them the visitor questions and make them answer out loud:

  • What does this do, in one sentence a non-user understands?
  • Why did you build it? The real reason — "my bus is always late" is a better opening than any mission statement.
  • What works today, and what is half-built or planned?
  • How does someone run it on their machine, exactly?

Their spoken answers are the raw material. Write down what they said, not what a README "should" sound like.

The 10-second test

Order matters more than polish. A visitor gives the page seconds:

  1. Name and the one-liner. Plain words. "Tracks the 42 bus in real time" beats "A revolutionary transit solution."
  2. A screenshot, GIF, or live link if the project has a face. This is the highest-value item on the page; help them capture one now, not later.
  3. Why it exists — two or three sentences, their story.
  4. How to run it — commands they have actually re-run from a clean clone in this session. A README whose install steps fail is worse than no README.
  5. What's real: works / rough / planned, honestly labeled. Honest scope reads as competence; a stranger can smell overclaiming.

Skip the badge wall, the empty "Contributing" boilerplate, the license essay (one line and a LICENSE file is plenty), and any section with nothing true to say.

Language pass

Go through their draft line by line. Cut every unverifiable adjective — powerful, seamless, blazing, robust. Cut sentences that describe no feature and make no claim a visitor can check. Watch for machine-writing tells: triple lists for rhythm, "it's not just a tracker, it's a platform" constructions. If the project is small, the README should be short. Short and true is the goal.

Ship

  • They run the install steps themselves from a fresh clone, top to bottom. Fix the README (or the code) until the steps just work.
  • Commit and push. Check how it renders on GitHub — formatting, image, links.
  • Send the repo link to one person who has never seen the project and ask what they think it does. If the answer misses, the one-liner gets another pass.

Done

  • README states what the project does, shows proof, and labels current limitations
  • Setup commands pass from a fresh clone on a documented environment
  • Public rendering, media, and links are checked; an unfamiliar reader can state the project's purpose accurately

If this project belongs on their resume, the build-resume skill will want the one-liner they just wrote.

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most readme changelog skills give

Counted across 471 of the 478 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-06

  • follow the Keep a Changelog formatin 31 of 471, across 26 files
  • omit empty sectionsin 21 of 471
  • Run from the git repository rootin 20 of 471, across 7 files
  • save output directly to CHANGELOG.mdin 20 of 471, across 7 files
  • Group commits into logical categoriesin 19 of 471, across 6 files
  • Review the generated changelog before publishingin 19 of 471, across 6 files
  • Apply changelog guidelines and brand voicein 18 of 471, across 5 files
  • Exclude internal commits like refactoring and testsin 18 of 471, across 5 files
  • Specify date ranges for focused changelogsin 17 of 471, across 4 files
  • Convert technical commits into customer languagein 17 of 471, across 4 files
  • group commits by conventional commit typein 14 of 471
  • insert new entry below unreleased sectionin 14 of 471

Said here and by no other author read

  • Ask the user direct questions about the project
  • State what the project does in plain words
  • Capture or include a screenshot GIF or live link
  • Explain why the project exists
  • Verify setup commands pass from a fresh clone
  • Label current limitations honestly

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once.

Keep looking

Skills are one crate of 328,083. Ordering is by how many stacks a row turns up in, so the top of any crate is what has actually been picked rather than what has the most stars.