prp-meta-skill

PRP Meta-Skill — Author, Refactor & Consolidate Skills

A PRP-style runbook for three jobs:

• Create a new skill from scratch (or from an existing command/prompt).
• Refactor an existing skill — split detail into references/, move output formats into templates/, and trim SKILL.md to a lean spine of pointers.
• Consolidate overlapping workflows — trace their contracts, choose one composition owner, reuse specialist skills, and retire duplicate paths without losing outcomes or human gates.

This skill is built the way it teaches: a lean body that defers detail to references/. Follow that example.

Prescribe the craft, not the content

This skill is opinionated about how to build a skill well and deliberately agnostic about what any given skill — or the artifact it produces — should contain.

• Prescribe (firm, universal): progressive disclosure, third-person trigger-rich descriptions, imperative body, no-duplication, lean body, every reference wired, deliberate invocation control, validation that fits. See references/skill-standards.md.
• Do NOT prescribe (per-project, the author's call): the sections a plan / PRD / report should contain, what a project's template looks like, which phases exist, the domain vocabulary. There is no canonical output shape — guide the author to a good decision, never hand them a fixed one.

Restrictions are not rigidity: be strict on the craft so the author stays free on the content.

The PRP lens — applied to the skill type

Classify the skill first (workflow / artifact-generator / knowledge-reference / tool-wrapper — see references/skill-standards.md → Skill types), then apply only the principles that fit:

1. Context is King — give the agent ALL the context it needs (patterns, gotchas, schemas, examples) via whichever source fits: inline, bundled and disclosed on demand, pointed to by file path or URL, or gathered from the user at runtime. Curate it — don't dump it. (references/skill-standards.md → Context sources.)
2. Validation that fits — workflow skills ship verifiable gates, and prefer an external, authoritative check (exit code, file presence) over the agent's own "done" sentinel. A knowledge/reference skill has nothing to validate — don't bolt a loop onto it.
3. Information dense — real trigger phrases, real examples, real file:line. No filler, no restating what the model already knows.
4. Progressive success — ship the smallest complete SKILL.md that triggers correctly first, validate, then enrich with references. Don't build all the references before the spine works.

Step 0 — Pick the mode

• Creating a new skill → follow references/creating-skills.md.
• Refactoring / trimming an existing skill → follow references/refactoring-skills.md.
• Consolidating / redesigning overlapping workflow skills → follow references/consolidating-workflows.md.
• All modes obey the same rules (frontmatter spec, writing style, progressive disclosure, no-duplication, invocation control) → read references/skill-standards.md first.

If the argument is blank, ask which mode and what the skill/target is. Do not guess.

Create — quick spine (full detail in references/creating-skills.md)

1. Gather context (PRP): collect the concrete phrases that should trigger the skill, the task it performs, the gotchas, and existing patterns to mirror.
2. Plan resources: what repeats → a scripts/ script; what informs thinking → a references/ doc; what is reused in the output → a templates//assets/ file.
3. Scaffold: copy templates/SKILL.template.md into .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md; create references/, templates/ only as needed.
4. Write the spine: third-person trigger-rich description; imperative, lean body; push detail to references.
5. Validate & iterate (references/validation.md): checklist → skill-reviewer → trigger test.

Refactor — quick spine (full detail in references/refactoring-skills.md)

1. Inventory the target SKILL.md. Classify each block: spine (keep) vs extractable (output-format templates, schemas, long worked examples, exhaustive pattern catalogs, troubleshooting, edge-case lists).
2. Extract verbatim into the TARGET skill's own references/ (or templates/ for output formats). Do not reword anything that affects behavior.
3. Replace with a pointer. For always-needed content (e.g. an output format the agent must always follow), add a mandatory-read instruction: "Before producing output, read templates/<x>.md." For sometimes-needed content, a lazy pointer ("For edge cases, see references/<x>.md").
4. Behavior-preservation check — the trimmed skill + references must drive the SAME process and SAME output as before. Nothing lost, nothing duplicated.
5. Validate (references/validation.md).

Consolidate — quick spine (full detail in references/consolidating-workflows.md)

1. Trace before editing. Inventory inputs, callers, artifacts, side effects, publication, gates, correction paths, and every terminal outcome.
2. Define the invariant. Preserve the user-visible outcome and authoritative checks; distinguish intentional redesign from accidental regression.
3. Assign ownership. Give each phase, durable artifact, human decision, and retry loop one maintainer. Compose specialist skills by name instead of copying their instructions.
4. Design handoffs. Prefer semantic identifiers and complete durable artifacts over remembered filenames, parallel indexes, or lossy summaries. State when to preserve a context and when independence matters.
5. Remove the old path. Update every caller and public surface, regenerate derived targets, then exercise the new workflow end-to-end.

The single biggest refactor risk: moving an always-needed output format into a lazily-loaded reference, so the agent forgets to read it and the output silently changes. Always pair such extractions with a mandatory-read instruction. See references/refactoring-skills.md.

Resources

• references/skill-standards.md — frontmatter spec, progressive disclosure, writing style, no-duplication, invocation control, cross-provider notes
• references/creating-skills.md — full PRP-style create runbook
• references/refactoring-skills.md — full split-and-trim runbook with a before/after example
• references/consolidating-workflows.md — workflow trace, ownership, context, publication, correction-loop, and retirement guidance
• references/validation.md — validation gates, checklist, skill-reviewer, trigger test
• templates/SKILL.template.md — lean SKILL.md skeleton
• templates/reference.template.md — skeleton for an extracted reference/template file