Wiki:Skills/Conventions
This page defines how skills and prompts are named, identified, and laid out in the Claude Skill Library. It exists so the library stays a usable inventory rather than a pile of pages — every entry is findable by ID, by slug, or by name, and every page presents its Markdown the same way.
Where skills live
All library pages sit in the Wiki: (project) namespace as subpages of Wiki:Skills. They are deliberately not in the main namespace, for two reasons: the main namespace is the workforce-management encyclopedia and its orphan, red-link, and coverage audits count only those articles; and "agent" and "skill" already mean something different there (a contact center agent, a scheduling skill group). Keeping the two apart prevents both collisions.
Naming
| Element | Format | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Page title | Wiki:Skills/<Display Name>, title case, spaces, no punctuation |
Wiki:Skills/Skill Creator
|
| Skill ID | CS-<DOMAIN>-<NNN> |
CS-META-001
|
| Prompt ID | CP-<DOMAIN>-<NNN> |
CP-WFM-004
|
| Slug | kebab-case, identical to the name: field in the frontmatter |
skill-creator
|
| Slug redirect | Wiki:Skills/<slug> → the page |
Wiki:Skills/skill-creator
|
| ID redirect | Wiki:Skills/<ID> → the page |
Wiki:Skills/CS-META-001
|
ID rules. Numbers are sequential within a domain, zero-padded to three digits, and permanent — a retired skill keeps its number and the number is never reused. The prefix records what the thing is: CS for a packaged skill with YAML frontmatter, CP for a standalone prompt with no frontmatter, CC reserved for slash commands. Domain codes are listed on Wiki:Skills.
Slug rules follow Anthropic's own constraints, since the slug is both the wiki shortcut and the skill's real identifier: lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only; 64 characters or fewer; and it must match the directory name the skill is installed into.
Status lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
Draft |
Written but not yet run in anger. Fine to copy, expect rough edges. |
Active |
In use and maintained. The default for anything worth keeping. |
Deprecated |
Superseded or retired. The page stays (the ID is permanent) and the intro must link to the successor. |
Bump the version field on any change to the skill body — 1.1 for wording or additions, 2.0 when the workflow itself changes — and set updated to that date. The change history section carries the reason.
Page format
Every skill page has the same seven parts, in this order:
- Infobox — the
{{Claude skill}}template, first line of the page, above everything else. - Intro sentence — bold skill name, then what it does in one sentence.
- When to use it — the situations that should send you to this skill, plus when to reach for something else instead. This is the part a reader scans before copying.
- Trigger phrases — the wording that invokes the skill in a live session. Worth recording separately from the description, because triggering is what most often goes wrong.
- The skill — the complete Markdown body in a copy block. Nothing else goes in this section.
- Usage notes — installation path, bundled files, surface-specific caveats.
- Change history — a dated table of what changed and why.
Close with See also and [[Category:Claude skills]].
The copy block
The Markdown body must be wrapped in a syntax-highlight block with the copy attribute, which is what puts the one-click copy button in the corner:
<syntaxhighlight lang="markdown" copy> --- name: skill-slug description: What it does and when to use it. --- # Skill Name ... </syntaxhighlight>
Paste the Markdown in verbatim, including the --- frontmatter fences — the copy button hands over exactly what's inside the block, so anything you add or trim there is what lands in the user's SKILL.md. Content inside the block is never parsed as wikitext, so braces, pipes, and template syntax are all safe. The single exception is a literal </syntaxhighlight> in the skill text, which would close the block early; there is no clean escape for it, so split the block in two around it if it ever comes up.
Skeleton
Copy this into a new page and fill it in. For a worked example, open the raw wikitext of Skill Creator.
{{Claude skill
| id = CS-XXX-001
| name = Display Name
| slug = display-name
| type = Skill
| domain = XXX — Domain label
| status = Draft
| version = 1.0
| updated = YYYY-MM-DD
| source = TARS
| runs-in = Claude Code, Claude.ai, Cowork
| bundled = None — single SKILL.md
}}
'''Display Name''' is a skill that ...
== When to use it ==
...
== Trigger phrases ==
* "..."
== The skill ==
<syntaxhighlight lang="markdown" copy>
---
name: display-name
description: ...
---
# Display Name
...
</syntaxhighlight>
== Usage notes ==
...
== Change history ==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Date !! Version !! Change
|-
| YYYY-MM-DD || 1.0 || Initial entry.
|}
== See also ==
* [[Wiki:Skills]] — the full library
[[Category:Claude skills]]
Registering the skill
A page nobody can find isn't in the inventory. After creating it:
- Add a row to the table on Wiki:Skills and update the count line beneath it.
- Create both shortcut redirects (
#REDIRECT [[Wiki:Skills/Display Name]]). - Add a line to Wiki:Change Log.
See also
- Wiki:Skills — the library and its inventory
- Wiki:Skills/Skill Creator — the reference example
- Template:Claude skill — the infobox template
