skill-authoring

What This Skill Does

The skill-authoring skill provides a standardized framework for developers to create, maintain, and optimize SKILL.md files for OpenClaw agents. It enforces the 'agentskills.io' standards to ensure that agent instructions remain concise, context-aware, and highly functional. By defining clear boundaries between high-freedom and low-freedom tasks, this skill helps authors craft instructions that minimize token usage while maximizing agent reliability. It includes structure templates, directory organization protocols, and best practices for balancing task-specific constraints against general-purpose intelligence.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, run the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/kjaylee/skill-authoring

Ensure that your agent environment has write access to your local skills directory, typically located at ~/.clawdbot/skills/. Once installed, you can trigger the authoring assistant to validate your existing or newly created skills.

Use Cases

• Creating New Skills: Automatically generate a valid SKILL.md boilerplate with the necessary YAML front matter.
• Refactoring Old Skills: Analyze long, verbose prompt files and condense them into efficient instructions that fit within context window limits.
• Standardizing Workflows: Implement strict 'low-freedom' constraints for sensitive tasks like file system access or API configuration to ensure consistent execution.
• Documentation Management: Moving deep technical specifications out of the main instruction file and into the references/ directory to save token space.

Example Prompts

1. "I'm building a skill for web scraping; help me write a SKILL.md that balances high-level goal setting with strict constraints for the scraper script."
2. "Review this SKILL.md file and tell me which sections I should move to the references directory to improve performance."
3. "Generate a template for a new task-automation skill that includes custom metadata and a link to my external Python scripts."

Tips & Limitations

• Token Budget: Always treat the context window as a shared resource. If your instructions exceed 500 lines, you must refactor to external references.
• Agent Intelligence: Do not waste space explaining basic programming concepts the agent already knows; focus on your specific domain logic.
• Security: Always audit scripts in the scripts/ folder before deployment, as these have direct access to your local environment.
• Structure: Always adhere to the defined directory structure (scripts/, references/, assets/) to ensure seamless integration with the OpenClaw agent runtime.