---
name: create-skill
description: Creates a new `SKILL.md` in `.claude/skills/`. Use when asked to "create a skill", add a skill, or make a new skill.
disable-model-invocation: true
---

# Create skill

Read these files in parallel:

- `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../standards/skill.md`: skill structure, skill types, frontmatter fields, invocation rules
- `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../standards/markdown.md`: banned words, punctuation, and formatting for skill body text
- The `write-human` skill: voice, rhythm, and sentence construction for skill body text

## Guards

- If `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../standards/skill.md` is not present, stop: `❌ skill.md standard not found. Reinstall the aitk plugin.`

## Steps

1. Answer three questions in writing before drafting anything. Tell the user and stop if a rule, a verb, or an existing skill already reaches this moment, or if the body carries no procedure a session would get wrong from first principles:
   - Does a rule, a verb, or an existing skill already reach this moment? A folder that only wraps something already reachable duplicates it rather than adding to the catalog.
   - Does the body carry a procedure a session would get wrong from first principles? A one-line wrapper around a single command needs no skill.
   - Will anything invoke it other than the author typing its name? Carry this one into the drafted `REQUIREMENT.md`'s `Must not` section as a review criterion instead, since nothing can answer it before the skill has run.
2. Draft the full `SKILL.md` from the user's description
3. Draft the sibling `REQUIREMENT.md` from what the skill is for, in the shape the standard states. Write the gaps from the user's description rather than from the drafted body, since a requirement derived from the body records whatever the draft overfitted to.
4. Confirm the skill name and both files with the user before writing
5. Write to `.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` and `.claude/skills/<name>/REQUIREMENT.md`

Every skill carries a requirement. A skill created without one is a gap someone closes in a later sweep, and the sweep has to reconstruct what the skill was for from the body it already shipped.

The two-question check has a shipped precedent. Pull request `#516` dropped `git-stash` for wrapping a single git command that needed no skill body, and `release-changelog` for being low-frequency and invoked by no other skill. The first is question one, and the second is question three read back after the fact, which is why it stays a review criterion rather than something this skill can gate on.