Document type: skill

Table of Contents

This page defines the skill document type — one entry in the document types taxonomy. The general contract every document follows (frontmatter, state, linking, tags) lives on the taxonomy page; this page carries only what is specific to skill.

Contract

A skill is task-shaped: it tells an LLM session how to perform a specific unit of work end-to-end (e.g. open a new sprint, run a PR review, scaffold a domain type). Compare with function above, which is role-shaped: a description of who does what, listing the skills they draw on. Functions compose skills; skills don't own functions. A skill is loaded into a session; a function is the session's identity.

Folder
doc/llm/skills/<slug>/SKILL.org (the filename is fixed uppercase by Claude Code convention).
Level
cross.
Slug
kebab-case (matches existing code-run-build, doc-add-recipe). The slug doubles as the Claude Code skill name:.
(no term)
Not stateful — no TODO.
How to create
see New Claude Code skill in the codegen recipe.
Required sections
  • A #+begin_export markdown ... #+end_export block with name: / description: / license: (Claude Code metadata).
  • * When to use this skill — one or two sentences.
  • * How to use this skill — numbered steps.
  • * Recipes — id-links to the operational recipes the skill indexes.
  • * Reference — id-link to the knowledge document or component model that backs the skill.
  • * Artefacts :noexport: containing the licence (tangled into LICENCE.txt at build).
Size
50–80 lines once skeleton sections are filled in. Skills are thin indexes, not reference content.

Emacs 29.1 (Org mode 9.6.6)