R Package Development Agent Skill

R package development with devtools, testthat, and roxygen2. Use when the user is working on an R package, running tests, writing documentation, or building package infrastructure.

716 tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

instructions only

copies elsewhere

how many repositories repackaged it

453

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/posit-dev/skills --skill r-package-development

The instruction itself

6 sections, as written by the author

R package development

Key commands

# Run code in the package
Rscript -e "devtools::load_all(); code"

# Run all tests
Rscript -e "devtools::test()"

# Run all tests for files starting with {name}
Rscript -e "devtools::test(filter = '^{name}')"

# Run all tests for R/{name}.R
Rscript -e "devtools::test_active_file('R/{name}.R')"

# Run a single test "blah" for R/{name}.R
Rscript -e "devtools::test_active_file('R/{name}.R', desc = 'blah')"

# Redocument the package
Rscript -e "devtools::document()"

# Check pkgdown documentation
Rscript -e "pkgdown::check_pkgdown()"

# Check the package with R CMD check
Rscript -e "devtools::check()"

# Format code
air format .

Coding

Always run air format . after generating code.
Use the base pipe operator (|>) not the magrittr pipe (%>%).
Use \() ... for single-line anonymous functions. For all other cases, use function() {...}.

Testing

Tests for R/{name}.R go in tests/testthat/test-{name}.R.
All new code should have an accompanying test.
If there are existing tests, place new tests next to similar existing tests.
Strive to keep tests minimal with few comments.
Avoid expect_true() and expect_false() in favour of a specific expectation which will give a better failure message.
When testing errors and warnings, don't use expect_error() or expect_warning(). Instead, use expect_snapshot(error = TRUE) for errors and expect_snapshot() for warnings because these allow the user to review the full text of the output.

Documentation

Every user-facing function should be exported and have roxygen2 documentation.
Wrap roxygen comments at 80 characters.
Internal functions should not have roxygen documentation.
Whenever you add a new (non-internal) documentation topic, also add the topic to _pkgdown.yml.
Always re-document the package after changing a roxygen2 comment.
Use pkgdown::check_pkgdown() to check that all topics are included in the reference index.

`NEWS.md`

Every user-facing change should be given a bullet in NEWS.md. Do not add bullets for small documentation changes or internal refactorings.
Each bullet should briefly describe the change to the end user.
If the change is related to a function, put the name of the function early in the bullet.
If the bullet is related to a GitHub issue or pull request, reference it by number in parentheses before the final period: (#123)..
Order bullets alphabetically by function name. Put all bullets that don't mention function names at the beginning.

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How to use it

Copy the folder

Take posit-dev/r-package-development 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.