Skill Authoring Agent Skill

Write Agent Skills that comply with the agentskills.io specification. WHEN: \"create a skill\", \"new skill\", \"write a skill\", \"skill template\", \"skill structure\", \"review skill\", \"skill PR\", \"skill compliance\", \"SKILL.md format\", \"skill frontmatter\", \"skill best practices\". DO NOT USE FOR: improving existing skills (use sensei), general documentation. INVOKES: waza CLI.

4k tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

instructions only

copies elsewhere

how many repositories repackaged it

136

stars on the repo

on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository

npx skills add https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-tools --skill skill-authoring

What comes with it

15 338 bytes besides the instruction

eval.yaml

evals/eval.yaml

evals/tasks/anti-trigger.yaml

evals/tasks/basic-trigger.yaml

evals/trigger_tests.yaml

references/guidelines.md

references/reference-guide.md

references/validation.md

tasks/authoring-basic-001.yaml

The instruction itself

9 sections, as written by the author

Skill Authoring Guide

Constraints

name: 1-64 chars, lowercase + hyphens, match directory
description: inline double-quoted, ≤60 words, ≤1024 chars
Use WHEN: with quoted trigger phrases (preferred over USE FOR:)
SKILL.md: <500 tokens (soft), <5000 (hard)
references/*.md: <1000 tokens each

Structure

SKILL.md (required) — Frontmatter + instructions
references/ (optional) — Detailed docs, loaded on demand
scripts/ (optional) — Executable code

Progressive Disclosure

Metadata loads at startup. SKILL.md on activation. References load when linked via text.

MCP Tools

| Tool | Purpose |

|------|---------|

| None | CLI-only; uses local file tools |

CLI fallback: Primary mode is CLI-based. No MCP servers required.

Quick Start

Create skill directory with SKILL.md
Add frontmatter: name, description, license
Run waza check {skill-name} to validate

Examples

"Create a new skill for code review"
"Review my skill for compliance"

Troubleshooting

If waza check reports broken links, verify reference file paths match exactly.

References

Guidelines — Writing and structure
Validation — Checks and procedures
Reference Guide — Budgets, loading, checklist

Other skills for the same job

different authors, same section of the catalogue

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Create new skills, modify and improve existing skills, and measure skill performance. Use when users want to create a skill from scratch, edit, or optimize an existing skill, run evals to test a skill, benchmark skill performance with variance analysis, or optimize a skill's description for better triggering accuracy.

Guide for creating effective skills. This skill should be used when users want to create a new skill (or update an existing skill) that extends Claude's capabilities with specialized knowledge, workflows, or tool integrations.

Replace with description of the skill and when Claude should use it.

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Dispatching Parallel Agents

by ZhanlinCui

×5

Use when facing 2+ independent tasks that can be worked on without shared state or sequential dependencies

This skill should be used when the user wants to "create a skill", "add a skill to plugin", "write a new skill", "improve skill description", "organize skill content", or needs guidance on skill structure, progressive disclosure, or skill development best practices for Claude Code plugins.

Helps users discover and install agent skills when they ask questions like "how do I do X", "find a skill for X", "is there a skill that can...", or express interest in extending capabilities. This skill should be used when the user is looking for functionality that might exist as an installable skill.

Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment

26k tokens scripts

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take azure/azure-sdk-tools-skill-authoring from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.