skill-father
Authoritative skill-creation standards (Boss). Use when creating or updating OpenClaw skills so they are portable, reproducible, include prerequisites checks, and have a guided installation/onboarding flow that persists machine-specific config in skill-local config files.
Why use this skill?
Standardize your OpenClaw AI agent skills with Skill-Father. Enforce portability, reproducible environments, and chat-first onboarding.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/moodykong/skill-fatherWhat This Skill Does
Skill-father serves as the authoritative architectural foundation for all OpenClaw AI agents. It acts as the 'boss' or standard-bearer for development, ensuring that every skill you build or integrate into your environment is portable, reproducible, and robust. Rather than letting individual skills evolve in isolation with hardcoded paths or missing dependencies, skill-father enforces a strict set of standards: mandatory prerequisite checks, decoupled machine-specific configurations, and streamlined onboarding workflows. By adopting this pattern, you transform your skill repository from a collection of scattered scripts into a professional-grade library of portable components that behave predictably across different machines and users.
Installation
To adopt the skill-father standard for your OpenClaw agent, execute the following command in your terminal:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/moodykong/skill-father
Once installed, every skill you create should reference this skill as a template. You must structure your new skills to include a config.env.example file (for templates) and a config.env file (for local data). During the onboarding process, the skill-father logic will check for required environment variables and binary dependencies using native OS tools, ensuring that your environment is primed before execution begins. For Telegram users, skill-father dictates that configuration should be handled through natural language interaction, where the agent prompts you for missing details and writes them to your local directory securely.
Use Cases
- Standardizing development across a team: Ensure that all developers on your team share the same configuration structure, preventing 'works on my machine' syndrome.
- Building portable agents: Create skills that can be ported from a local laptop to a server environment by simply swapping the local
config.envfile. - Safe automation: Use the built-in prerequisite checks to verify that external CLI tools (like 1Password or Docker) are installed and authorized before the agent attempts to perform tasks.
- Streamlined onboarding: Guide non-technical users through the setup of complex skills by leveraging the chat-first onboarding protocol.
Example Prompts
- 'Skill-father, help me initialize a new project called research-analyzer using your standard template structure.'
- 'Skill-father, check if my current environment has all the necessary dependencies to run the 1Password integration skill.'
- 'Skill-father, walk me through the configuration of my new data-scraper skill using the chat-first onboarding flow.'
Tips & Limitations
- Always prioritize the use of
config.env.exampleover manual documentation. If a setting needs to be configured, it belongs in the example file, not inside your prose documentation. - Remember that skill-father is opinionated: it enforces specific locations for scripts and config files. Do not deviate from this hierarchy if you intend to maintain compatibility with the broader OpenClaw ecosystem.
- For TTY environments, use the terminal onboarding script, but for Telegram users, ensure you have implemented the chat-based input handlers to prevent hanging processes. Always fail fast: if a dependency is missing, stop the installation early and provide a clear, actionable error message to the user.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-moodykong-skill-father": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: file-write, file-read, code-execution
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