Create skill — authoring & refactor craft

Create and refine project-specific skills under .agent/skills/generated/.

Requires pack: authoring. See Packs.

npm

npx create-lean-agent-kit@latest . --enable-pack authoring

pnpm

pnpm dlx create-lean-agent-kit@latest . --enable-pack authoring

yarn

yarn dlx create-lean-agent-kit@latest . --enable-pack authoring

bun

bunx create-lean-agent-kit@latest . --enable-pack authoring

What it is

Meta skills for creating and refactoring project-specific skills under .agent/skills/generated/. Adapted from Matt Pocock's writing-great-skills (MIT) and Cursor create-skill discovery patterns. The pack applies LAK format rules plus predictability craft — without replacing distill, artifact generators, or curation.

Use it when a repeated workflow should become a reusable, LAK-compliant skill file.

Do I need this pack?

• Enable if you distill session workflows into skills, build artifact generators, or need a craft/refactor pass on generated skills.
• Skip if you only use shipped kit skills and do not maintain .agent/skills/generated/.

Use cases

• Distill a session — capture a workflow with distill-skill, then craft-pass with create-skill.
• Generator from an example — skill-artifact-template → craft pass → run the generator in daily work.
• Fix sprawl — refactor a generated skill that duplicates steps or lacks completion criteria.
• Curate — archive stale generators without deleting history.

What it is / is not

Create skill is	Create skill is not
Orchestrator for LAK-compliant skill authoring	A replacement for leanagentkit-distill-skill
Refactor lens (pruning, hierarchy, failure modes)	A replacement for leanagentkit-skill-artifact-template
Craft pass after distill or artifact-template drafts	Registry maintenance — use leanagentkit-curate-skills
Explicit-invoke meta skill	A modifier of kit-owned leanagentkit-*.md in user projects

How it works

Quick start

Create or refactor a generated skill:

Read .agent/skills/leanagentkit-create-skill.md and follow it.

Refactor an existing file:

Read .agent/skills/leanagentkit-create-skill.md and refactor .agent/skills/generated/leanagentkit-<name>.md.

When to use which skill

Goal	Skill
Session workflow → reusable skill	leanagentkit-distill-skill → craft pass via create-skill
Code example → artifact generator	leanagentkit-skill-artifact-template → craft pass via create-skill
Requirements → new skill (greenfield)	leanagentkit-create-skill (create branch)
Fix sprawl, duplication, skipped steps	leanagentkit-create-skill (refactor branch)
Archive stale generators	leanagentkit-curate-skills

References (read with create-skill)

File	Role
references/skill-authoring-standards.md	Frontmatter, WHAT+WHEN descriptions, section order, output paths
references/skill-craft-glossary.md	Predictability, information hierarchy, failure modes, LAK overrides

LAK hard rules vs craft principles

Hard rules (always):

• Generated skills live at .agent/skills/generated/leanagentkit-<name>.md
• description — third person, WHAT + WHEN, trigger terms; soft target ≤200 chars; hard max 1024
• Never delete — archive to generated/archived/ with status: archived
• Never modify kit-owned leanagentkit-*.md in user projects (overwritten on upgrade)
• No router/index-only skills

Craft principles (refactor levers):

• Predictability — same process every run, not identical output
• Completion criteria — checkable, exhaustive where it matters
• Progressive disclosure — push reference to sibling files with sharp pointers
• Leading words — collapse verbose triads into pretrained tokens
• Failure modes — premature completion, duplication, sediment, sprawl, no-op

Cursor and agentskills allow richer discovery descriptions; LAK generated skills should stay concise unless extra trigger terms materially improve routing.

Pairing with the learning loop

leanagentkit-distill-skill          →  capture session workflow
leanagentkit-skill-artifact-template →  infer generator from example
leanagentkit-create-skill           →  standards + craft pass
leanagentkit-curate-skills          →  archive stale; never delete
generated/leanagentkit-<name>.md      →  run the skill in daily work

Invocation examples

New skill from requirements:

Read .agent/skills/leanagentkit-create-skill.md and follow it. I need a skill for …

Craft pass on a distill draft:

Read .agent/skills/leanagentkit-create-skill.md — craft pass only on .agent/skills/generated/leanagentkit-<name>.md.