Skill authoring
Author a reusable portable business skill when a recurring capability needs clear scope, method, examples and evaluation criteria.
Inputs and scope
Use capability purpose, intended users, representative requests, available supplied inputs, desired outputs, constraints and nearby capabilities. Use the available evidence and identify material gaps. Do not present unverified information as independently checked.
If a missing fact changes the decision, ask a focused question and complete the parts that do not depend on it. Otherwise proceed with an explicit, reversible assumption. Do not invent evidence to fill gaps. Keep supplied dates, units, source labels and disagreement wherever they affect interpretation.
Method
- Reconcile the intended capability with supplied existing descriptions; choose reuse, refinement or a distinct skill based on the decision/output boundary. Do not invent a catalog.
- Define a specific discovery description, activation situations and important near-miss exclusions. Avoid coercive language that tries to force invocation for unrelated tasks.
- Write self-contained instructions with inputs, missing-information behavior, entry/exit conditions and a workflow form matching the task. Include essential definitions in the delivered text.
- Add examples and quality checks that address real failure modes: skipped constraints, wrong output form, missing fields or conditional decisions. Preserve user scope and distinguish execution from a plan.
- Design development cases, separate validation cases and an untouched final acceptance set. Evaluate useful outcomes, not obedience alone; report cases as proposed until supplied run evidence exists.
Deliver
Return skill text package with name, discovery description, instructions, examples, quality criteria, provenance note and evaluation plan. Match detail to the user's decision and requested length. Clearly distinguish supplied facts, reasoned interpretations and proposed actions; do not turn an illustrative calculation or scenario into an observed result.
Quality checks
- No hidden references, tool prerequisites or runtime guarantees.
- Source-copy rights are explicit; independently author when rights are unresolved.
- Repeated score-based tuning does not remain a held-out test.
- Silence is not approval or successful evaluation.
Example
Example request: Create a skill for reviewing supplier quotes from pasted text. Users confuse unit prices and total landed costs; existing vendor evaluation is broader.
What a good response should do: Define a quote-comparability scope, require units/incoterm-like supplied cost responsibilities and missing-cost treatment, add competing-unit examples, and distinguish analysis from procurement execution, reporting execution only if separately authorized and completed.