Agent Skill Creator

Create cross-platform agent skills from natural language workflow descriptions.

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What Is This?

Agent Skill Creator is a Level 5 skill dark factory. Install it once, then type /agent-skill-creator followed by whatever you have — workflow descriptions, documentation, links, existing code, API docs, compliance checklists, PDFs. The agent deeply reads and understands your material, generates its own internal specification, implements the skill end-to-end from that specification, validates it, security-scans it, and delivers a production-ready skill. You provide the raw material and evaluate the outcome. The agent handles everything in between.

Inspired by the dark factory model where specifications go in and working software comes out: the human removes the cognitive constraint by providing domain knowledge, the factory removes the implementation constraint by building autonomously, and the quality gates remove the trust constraint by validating automatically.

Input: Raw material — documentation, links, code, process descriptions, PDFs, anything that captures the workflow. Output: A self-contained, validated, security-scanned skill directory ready to install on any platform and publish to the team registry.

Built-in Quality Gates

Every skill goes through automated checks before it reaches your team. You don't need to trust the output blindly — the toolchain enforces quality:

Gate	What It Checks	When It Runs
Spec Validation	SKILL.md exists, frontmatter is well-formed, name follows kebab-case rules, description under 1024 chars, body under 500 lines	During creation (Phase 5) and on every publish
Security Scan	No hardcoded API keys, no exposed credentials, no eval()/exec() injection risks, no sensitive files (.env, secrets.json)	During creation (Phase 5) and on every publish
Naming Convention	Directory name matches SKILL.md name field, no consecutive hyphens, 1-64 characters	During validation
Structure Check	Required files present, local references resolve, metadata fields populated	During validation

Skills that fail validation cannot be published. Skills with high-severity security issues are blocked unless explicitly overridden. This means every skill in the registry has passed both gates — your team can install with confidence.

You can also run these checks independently at any time:

python3 scripts/validate.py ./my-skill/          # Spec compliance
python3 scripts/security_scan.py ./my-skill/      # Security audit

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Why Agent Skills Matter

AI agents (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, Gemini) are becoming the primary interface for knowledge work. But out of the box, every agent starts from zero — it doesn't know your company's processes, data sources, naming conventions, or compliance requirements.

Agent skills solve this. A skill is structured domain knowledge that an agent loads automatically. Instead of re-explaining your workflow every conversation, the agent already knows how to do it.

The corporate opportunity:

• Without skills: Every person prompts the agent differently. Knowledge stays in individual chat histories. New hires start from scratch. The same workflow gets re-explained hundreds of times.
• With skills: Someone describes a workflow once. The agent-skill-creator turns it into a reusable skill. It gets published to the team registry. Now every agent on the team — regardless of platform — knows how to do that workflow. Knowledge compounds instead of evaporating.

What changes in practice:

1. Operations teams describe their runbooks. Skills get created. Now agents can execute standard procedures consistently.
2. Data teams describe their analysis pipelines. Skills get created. Now any team member can run the same analysis by asking their agent.
3. Finance teams describe their reporting workflows. Skills get created. Now quarterly reports follow the same methodology every time.
4. Engineering teams describe their deployment processes, code review standards, testing protocols. Skills get created. Now agents enforce consistency across the organization.

The pattern is always the same: capture tacit knowledge as skills, share them through the registry, and let agents scale that knowledge across the team.

Why you can trust the output:

This is a Level 5 dark factory — not "prompt and pray." The agent reads your material, generates its own internal specification, implements from that specification, and then runs automated quality gates before anything is delivered. Validation checks spec compliance (structure, naming, frontmatter). Security scanning checks for hardcoded credentials and injection patterns. Skills that fail these gates cannot be published to the registry.

The human provides the domain knowledge (the hard part). The factory builds the skill (the tedious part). The quality gates verify the output (the trust part). Three constraints removed: cognitive, implementation, and trust.

This repo is the complete toolkit: create skills from raw material, validate them against the open standard, security-scan them, and share them through a git-based registry that gives you version history, access control, and review workflows for free.

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End-to-End Walkthrough

This is the full lifecycle from idea to team-wide adoption.

Step 1: Install the Skill Creator

Clone this repo into your agent's skill directory:

# Claude Code
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git ~/.claude/skills/agent-skill-creator

# Cursor
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .cursor/rules/agent-skill-creator

# Any other supported platform — see "Setup by Platform" below

Step 2: Invoke the Skill Creator

Open your agent and type /agent-skill-creator followed by whatever you have. The more context you provide, the better the skill:

/agent-skill-creator Every week I pull sales data from our CRM, clean
duplicate entries, calculate regional totals, and generate a PDF report.

/agent-skill-creator Based on our deployment runbook: https://wiki.internal/deploy-process

/agent-skill-creator See scripts/invoice_processor.py — turn it into a reusable skill

/agent-skill-creator Here's our API docs: https://api.internal/docs
Create a skill that queries stock levels and generates reorder reports.

/agent-skill-creator Based on compliance-checklist.pdf, create a SOX audit skill

You can pass in plain English descriptions, documentation links, existing code, API docs, PDFs — anything. Combine multiple sources in one message. The agent reads everything and runs the dark factory pipeline:

STAGE 1: UNDERSTAND AND SPECIFY
  DISCOVERY        → Reads all your material, researches APIs, data sources
  DESIGN           → Generates its own internal specification (use cases, methods, edge cases)

STAGE 2: BUILD AND VERIFY
  ARCHITECTURE     → Structures the skill directory
  DETECTION        → Crafts activation keywords so the skill triggers reliably
  IMPLEMENTATION   → Creates all files, validates, security-scans, delivers

The agent deeply understands your material before writing a single line of code. It generates its own specification — a complete internal contract for what the skill must do — and then implements from that specification autonomously. The output is a complete skill directory (e.g., ./sales-report-builder/) with functional code, documentation, and a spec-compliant SKILL.md.

Step 3: Automated Quality Gates

Every skill the pipeline produces goes through two automated checks before it's considered ready:

# Spec compliance — structure, naming, frontmatter, file references
python3 scripts/validate.py ./sales-report-builder/

# Security — no hardcoded keys, no credential exposure, no injection risks
python3 scripts/security_scan.py ./sales-report-builder/

These run automatically at the end of Phase 5 (Implementation) and again when you publish to the registry. If validation fails or the security scan finds high-severity issues, the skill is blocked until the issues are fixed. You don't have to review the output manually to trust it — the toolchain does that for you.

Step 4: Publish to the Team Registry

The registry lives inside this repo at registry/. Publishing copies the skill into the shared catalog:

python3 scripts/skill_registry.py publish ./sales-report-builder/ --tags sales,reports,crm

This validates the skill, runs the security scan, copies the files into registry/skills/sales-report-builder/, and updates registry/registry.json.

Then commit and push so the team can access it:

git add registry/
git commit -m "feat: Add sales-report-builder skill"
git push

Step 5: Team Discovers and Installs Skills

Colleagues pull the latest and browse the catalog:

git pull

# What skills are available?
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py list

# Output:
# NAME                  VERSION  AUTHOR       TAGS
# sales-report-builder  1.0.0    sales-team   sales, reports, crm
# data-quality-checker  1.0.0    data-team    data, validation
# deploy-checklist      2.0.0    engineering  deploy, ci, checklist

# Search for something specific
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py search "sales"

# Get full details
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py info sales-report-builder

# Install it (auto-detects your platform)
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py install sales-report-builder

Step 6: Use the Skill

After installing, the skill activates automatically. The colleague just opens their agent and says:

"Generate the weekly sales report for the West region"

The agent recognizes this matches the sales-report-builder skill and executes the workflow — pulling data, cleaning it, calculating totals, and generating the PDF. Same process, same quality, every time.

Step 7: Iterate

Skills improve over time. Someone adds error handling for API timeouts. Another person adds a new region. They publish updates to the registry, the team pulls, and everyone benefits.

# Update and re-publish
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py publish ./sales-report-builder/ --force
git add registry/ && git commit -m "fix: Handle CRM API timeouts" && git push

The Result

Over weeks and months, the registry grows organically. Each team contributes skills from their domain. The organization builds a living library of operational knowledge that every agent can access — regardless of which platform (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) each person uses.

python3 scripts/skill_registry.py list

# NAME                    VERSION  AUTHOR        TAGS
# sales-report-builder    1.2.0    sales-team    sales, reports, crm
# data-quality-checker    1.0.0    data-team     data, validation
# deploy-checklist        2.1.0    engineering   deploy, ci, checklist
# quarterly-compliance    1.0.0    legal-team    compliance, audit
# customer-churn-model    3.0.0    data-science  ml, churn, prediction
# incident-runbook        1.1.0    sre-team      incidents, on-call
# onboarding-guide        1.0.0    hr-team       onboarding, new-hire

This is the shift: from individual prompting to organizational capability.

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Quick Start

Claude Code

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git ~/.claude/skills/agent-skill-creator

GitHub Copilot

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .github/skills/agent-skill-creator

Cursor

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .cursor/rules/agent-skill-creator

After installing, open your agent and type:

/agent-skill-creator Create a skill for analyzing CSV files

The skill creator activates and walks you through the full pipeline. You can also just describe a workflow naturally — the skill activates on phrases like "create a skill for...", "automate this workflow", etc.

For Windsurf, Cline, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and other platforms see Setup by Platform below.

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Usage

Invocation

Type /agent-skill-creator followed by your input:

/agent-skill-creator Create a skill for analyzing stock market data
/agent-skill-creator Every day I process CSV files manually, automate this
/agent-skill-creator https://wiki.internal/weather-api-docs
/agent-skill-creator See scripts/data_pipeline.py — make this a reusable skill

The skill also activates on natural language without the prefix:

Create a skill for weather alerts
Automate this workflow
Validate this skill
Export this skill for Cursor

What Happens

The dark factory reads your material, generates its own spec, builds the skill, and verifies it:

UNDERSTAND:  Read all material, research domain, generate internal specification
BUILD:       Structure directory, write all code and docs, craft activation keywords
VERIFY:      Run spec validation + security scan — block delivery if either fails

Output: a complete skill directory you can install on any supported platform.

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Setup by Platform (Complete Guide)

Each platform installs with a single git clone directly into the right location. Replace agent-skill-creator with the skill name when installing generated skills.

Claude Code

# Personal skill (available in all projects)
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git ~/.claude/skills/agent-skill-creator

# Per-project (scoped to one repo)
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .claude/skills/agent-skill-creator

GitHub Copilot (CLI + VS Code)

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .github/skills/agent-skill-creator

Cursor

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .cursor/rules/agent-skill-creator

Cursor reads SKILL.md natively alongside its .mdc rules.

Windsurf

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .windsurf/skills/agent-skill-creator

Cline

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .clinerules/agent-skill-creator

OpenAI Codex CLI

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .codex/skills/agent-skill-creator

Gemini CLI

git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .gemini/skills/agent-skill-creator

Claude Desktop / claude.ai (Export)

These platforms use .zip upload instead of directory copying:

1. Export: python3 scripts/export_utils.py ./agent-skill-creator/ --variant desktop
2. Open Claude Desktop or claude.ai
3. Go to Settings > Skills > Upload skill
4. Select the generated .zip file

Claude API (Programmatic)

python3 scripts/export_utils.py ./agent-skill-creator/ --variant api

import anthropic

client = anthropic.Anthropic()

with open("agent-skill-creator-api-v4.0.0.zip", "rb") as f:
    skill = client.skills.create(file=f, name="agent-skill-creator")

response = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your query here"}],
    container={"type": "custom_skill", "skill_id": skill.id},
    betas=["code-execution-2025-08-25", "skills-2025-10-02"],
)

Note: API sandbox has no network access, no pip install at runtime, and an 8 MB size limit.

Updating

To update an installed skill, just git pull from inside the skill directory:

cd ~/.claude/skills/agent-skill-creator && git pull

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How It Works

Phase	What Happens	Key Output
Discovery	Researches the domain, identifies APIs and data sources	Domain model, API list
Design	Defines use cases, analysis methods, output formats	Use case specs, methodology docs
Architecture	Decides simple skill vs. complex suite, plans directory structure	Architecture decision, file plan
Detection	Crafts SKILL.md description and activation keywords	SKILL.md frontmatter, trigger phrases
Implementation	Generates all code, docs, installer; validates and scans	Complete skill directory

For full pipeline documentation, see references/pipeline-phases.md.

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Generated Skill Format

Every generated skill follows the Agent Skills Open Standard:

skill-name/
  SKILL.md              # Main skill file (<500 lines, spec-compliant)
  scripts/              # Functional Python code
  references/           # Detailed documentation (progressive disclosure)
  assets/               # Templates, schemas, config files
  install.sh            # Cross-platform installer
  README.md             # Multi-platform install instructions

SKILL.md Frontmatter

---
name: skill-name
description: >-
  Concise description of what the skill does (<=1024 chars).
  Includes activation trigger phrases.  
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Your Name
  version: 1.0.0
compatibility: >-
  Works on Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf,
  Cline, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI.  
---

Followed by sections: When to Use, Overview, Workflow, Implementation Guidelines, and References.

Naming rules: kebab-case, 1-64 characters, pattern ^[a-z][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]$, must match directory name.

---

Tools

Validate a Skill

Check spec compliance against the Agent Skills Open Standard:

python3 scripts/validate.py ./my-skill/

# JSON output (for CI/CD)
python3 scripts/validate.py ./my-skill/ --json

Checks: SKILL.md existence, valid frontmatter, kebab-case name (1-64 chars), description under 1024 chars, body under 500 lines, required directory structure, install.sh exists and is executable.

Exit codes: 0 = valid (may have warnings), 1 = invalid (errors found).

Security Scan

Scan for common security issues before sharing or deploying:

python3 scripts/security_scan.py ./my-skill/

# JSON output
python3 scripts/security_scan.py ./my-skill/ --json

Detects: hardcoded API keys (OpenAI, AWS, GitHub, GitLab), tokens and secrets, command injection patterns, unsafe file operations, credential exposure in config files.

Exit codes: 0 = clean, 1 = issues found.

Export for Other Platforms

Package skills for distribution:

# Desktop/Web (.zip for Claude Desktop, claude.ai)
python3 scripts/export_utils.py ./my-skill/ --variant desktop

# API (.zip for Claude API, <=8MB)
python3 scripts/export_utils.py ./my-skill/ --variant api

# All variants
python3 scripts/export_utils.py ./my-skill/

Output goes to exports/. See references/export-guide.md for full documentation.

Skill Registry

Share and discover skills across your team. The registry lives inside this repo (registry/) so one git pull gives everyone access to all published skills.

First-time setup (once per organization):

python3 scripts/skill_registry.py init --name "Acme Corp Skills"

Typical workflow:

# Someone describes a workflow, the agent creates a skill
# "Every week I pull sales data, clean it, and make a report"
# → agent creates ./sales-report-builder/

# Publish it so the team can use it
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py publish ./sales-report-builder/ --tags sales,reports

# Browse what the team has built
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py list
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py search "sales"

# Get details about a skill
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py info sales-report-builder

# Install a skill to your platform (auto-detects Claude Code, Cursor, etc.)
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py install sales-report-builder

# Install for a specific platform or at project level
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py install sales-report-builder --platform cursor --project

# Remove a skill from the registry
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py remove sales-report-builder --force

After publishing, commit and push so colleagues can git pull and install the new skill.

All commands support --json for machine-readable output. Use --force to overwrite duplicates or bypass confirmation prompts.

Exit codes: 0 = success, 1 = error.

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Architecture Decisions

The creator automatically decides simple vs. complex based on scope:

Factor	Simple Skill	Complex Suite
Workflows	1-2	3+ distinct
Code size	<1000 lines	>2000 lines
Structure	Single SKILL.md	Multiple component SKILL.md files

For detailed decision logic, see references/architecture-guide.md.

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For AI Agents (Machine-Readable Reference)

This section provides structured metadata for AI agents ingesting this README as context.

Activation Triggers

# Primary invocation
/agent-skill-creator <description, links, code, docs>

# Natural language (also works)
create a skill for [domain]
automate this workflow
every day I [task]
I need to automate [task]
validate this skill
export this skill for [platform]

Install Commands

# Claude Code (personal)
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git ~/.claude/skills/agent-skill-creator
# GitHub Copilot
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .github/skills/agent-skill-creator
# Cursor
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .cursor/rules/agent-skill-creator
# Windsurf
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .windsurf/skills/agent-skill-creator
# Cline
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .clinerules/agent-skill-creator
# Codex CLI
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .codex/skills/agent-skill-creator
# Gemini CLI
git clone https://github.com/FrancyJGLisboa/agent-skill-creator.git .gemini/skills/agent-skill-creator
# Update
cd <install-path>/agent-skill-creator && git pull

Tool Commands

# Validate
python3 scripts/validate.py PATH      # Human output
python3 scripts/validate.py PATH --json  # Machine output

# Security scan
python3 scripts/security_scan.py PATH
python3 scripts/security_scan.py PATH --json

# Export
python3 scripts/export_utils.py PATH --variant desktop
python3 scripts/export_utils.py PATH --variant api

# Registry (default --registry ./registry)
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py init --name "Team Name"
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py publish SKILL_PATH --tags T1,T2
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py list [--json]
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py search QUERY [--json]
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py install SKILL_NAME [--platform PLATFORM] [--project]
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py info SKILL_NAME [--json]
python3 scripts/skill_registry.py remove SKILL_NAME --force

Platform Paths

Platform	Path	Scope
Claude Code	~/.claude/skills/	User-level
Claude Code	.claude/skills/	Project-level
GitHub Copilot	.github/skills/	Project-level
Cursor	.cursor/rules/	Workspace
Windsurf	.windsurf/skills/	Workspace
Cline	.clinerules/	Workspace
Codex CLI	.codex/skills/	Workspace
Gemini CLI	.gemini/skills/	Workspace
Claude Desktop	.zip upload	App-level
claude.ai	.zip upload	Web
Claude API	.zip via API	Programmatic

SKILL.md Spec (Required Fields)

---
name: kebab-case-name          # 1-64 chars, ^[a-z][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]$
description: >-                # 1-1024 chars, include activation keywords
  What this skill does...
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Author Name
  version: X.Y.Z
---
# Body: <500 lines. Move detailed content to references/.

Pipeline Phases

DISCOVERY -> DESIGN -> ARCHITECTURE -> DETECTION -> IMPLEMENTATION

Each phase is documented in references/phase{1..5}-*.md.

---

Troubleshooting

Skill not activating: Ensure SKILL.md description field contains the trigger phrases you expect. The description is the primary activation mechanism.

Validation fails on name: Names must be kebab-case, 1-64 characters, no consecutive hyphens, no leading/trailing hyphens. Pattern: ^[a-z][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]$.

SKILL.md too long: Body must be under 500 lines. Move detailed documentation to references/ and link from the main SKILL.md.

Export fails with size error: API exports have an 8 MB limit. Reduce asset sizes or exclude large files.

install.sh not executable: Run chmod +x install.sh before executing.

Platform not auto-detected: Use ./install.sh --platform <name> to specify explicitly.

---

Project Structure

agent-skill-creator/
  SKILL.md                      # Meta-skill definition (the product)
  README.md                     # This file
  scripts/
    validate.py                 # Spec compliance validator
    security_scan.py            # Security scanner
    export_utils.py             # Cross-platform export tool
    skill_registry.py           # Shared skill registry CLI
    install-template.sh         # Template for generated install.sh
  references/
    pipeline-phases.md          # Full 5-phase pipeline instructions
    architecture-guide.md       # Simple skill vs. complex suite
    cross-platform-guide.md     # Platform-specific details
    export-guide.md             # Export system documentation
    quality-standards.md        # Quality and code standards
    templates-guide.md          # Template system guide
    interactive-mode.md         # Interactive wizard docs
    multi-agent-guide.md        # Suite creation docs
    agentdb-integration.md      # Optional learning system
    phase1-discovery.md         # Phase 1 deep dive
    phase2-design.md            # Phase 2 deep dive
    phase3-architecture.md      # Phase 3 deep dive
    phase4-detection.md         # Phase 4 deep dive
    phase5-implementation.md    # Phase 5 deep dive
    templates/                  # Skill templates
    examples/stock-analyzer/    # Example skill
  registry/                     # Shared skill catalog (git-tracked)
    registry.json               # Skill manifest
    skills/                     # Published skill directories
  exports/                      # Export output directory

---

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/my-feature)
3. Make your changes
4. Run validation: python3 scripts/validate.py ./
5. Run security scan: python3 scripts/security_scan.py ./
6. Submit a pull request

---

License

MIT License.

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Links

• Agent Skills Open Standard
• Architecture Guide
• Pipeline Phases Reference
• Cross-Platform Guide
• Export Guide