Skills skill-best-practices

📦

skill-best-practices

Name: skill-best-practices
Author: dboeckli

Content revision r1 Medium Risk ⚙️ External commands📁 Filesystem access🌐 Network access

Build Better AI Skills

AI skills often fail because triggers, structure, and validation are unclear. This guide provides practical patterns for reliable SKILL.md design, testing, and maintenance.

Supports: Claude Codex Code(CC)

📊 72 Adequate

Install with my Agent

Copy this request to your Agent. It includes the canonical Skill page and manifest.

Agent request

Review the Skillstore skill "skill-best-practices" from https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices.md and its manifest at https://skillstore.io/api/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/manifest. Verify the artifact. You may proceed after verification, subject to the environment's own policy.

Your Agent should still show its plan and request any confirmation required by the security policy.

Agent-readable resources

Use these links when an AI agent, crawler, or script needs clean context instead of reading the full page.

Markdown detail GET /skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices.md Signed manifest GET /api/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/manifest Signed lockfile GET /api/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/lockfile

Test it

Using "skill-best-practices". Create a skill that plans sprints in Linear.

Expected outcome:

A three-use-case plan with sprint triggers, ordered Linear actions, validation gates, error handling, and representative tests.

Using "skill-best-practices". Review my skill because it rarely loads automatically.

Expected outcome:

Fail: The description does not include phrases users commonly enter.
Warning: The scope is broad and lacks negative triggers.
Fix: Add task-specific phrases, exclusions, and ten paraphrased trigger tests.

Using "skill-best-practices". Improve a large skill that consumes too much context.

Expected outcome:

A concise core instruction file with detailed guidance moved into clearly linked references.

Security Audit

Medium Risk

v1 • 9/26/2026 Open versioned report

All 91 static alerts are false positives caused by Markdown formatting, bounded local validation, or ordinary path handling. No prompt injection or malicious intent was found. Remote validation still has a medium supply-chain risk because it executes an unpinned npm package.

Files scanned

675

Lines analyzed

Review items

False positives ignored

Confirmed security concerns (1)

Medium

scripts/validate-skills.sh:74

Unpinned Remote Package Execution

Remote validation uses npx with automatic approval and no package version. Registry changes could execute code that was not reviewed with this skill.

Line 74 directly runs the unversioned skills package through npx --yes. The remote mode therefore trusts the current registry release.

Risk Factors

⚙️ External commands (50)

📁 Filesystem access (4)

scripts/validate-skills.sh:13 scripts/validate-skills.sh:12 scripts/validate-skills.sh:63 scripts/validate-skills.sh:71

🌐 Network access (1)

SKILL.md:10

Audited by: codex

Share & cite this report

Share the versioned assessment report, neutral badge, embed card, and citations. Skillstore reports evidence without deciding whether this Skill is safe.

Open versioned report

Copy report link

https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/audits/1?utm_source=security_passport&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=versioned_report

Markdown badge

[![Skillstore security assessment](https://skillstore.io/badges/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/security.svg)](https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices?utm_source=security_passport_badge)

HTML badge

<a href="https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices?utm_source=security_passport_badge"><img src="https://skillstore.io/badges/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/security.svg" alt="Skillstore security assessment" loading="lazy"></a>

Embed card

<iframe src="https://skillstore.io/embed/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices.html" title="Skillstore Security Assessment" sandbox="allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" loading="lazy" referrerpolicy="no-referrer" width="420" height="180"></iframe>

Academic citations (APA · BibTeX · CFF)

APA citation

dboeckli. (2026). skill-best-practices security audit report (audit version 1) [Author version unspecified]. Skillstore. https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/audits/1

BibTeX citation

@techreport{dboeckli-dboeckli-skill-best-practices-2026,
  author = {dboeckli},
  title = {skill-best-practices security audit report (audit version 1)},
  institution = {Skillstore},
  year = {2026},
  number = {1},
  url = {https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/audits/1},
  note = {Author version unspecified}
}

CITATION.cff

cff-version: 1.2.0
message: "If you use this Skill, cite its author and this versioned security audit report."
title: "skill-best-practices security audit report (audit version 1)"
version: "unspecified"
type: report
authors:
  - name: "dboeckli"
date-released: "2026-09-26"
url: "https://skillstore.io/skills/dboeckli-skill-best-practices/audits/1"
identifiers:
  - type: other
    value: "skillstore:dboeckli-skill-best-practices:audit:1"
    description: "Skillstore immutable audit report identifier"

Skillstore Score

Why this score Evidence Confidence: Medium

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What You Can Build

Create a New Skill

Turn a workflow idea into a structured skill with clear triggers, instructions, examples, and validation steps.

Review an Existing Skill

Evaluate frontmatter, instruction quality, progressive disclosure, testing coverage, and troubleshooting guidance.

Fix Trigger Behavior

Refine descriptions and negative triggers when a skill loads too rarely or on unrelated requests.

Try These Prompts

Plan a Basic Skill

Create a skill plan for [goal]. Define three use cases, trigger phrases, required tools, workflow steps, and expected results.

Write a Skill Description

Rewrite this skill description: [description]. Include its purpose, specific trigger phrases, important capabilities, and clear exclusions.

Audit a SKILL.md File

Review [SKILL.md content]. Report pass, warning, or fail for frontmatter, triggers, instructions, examples, references, testing, and troubleshooting.

Design an Advanced Workflow

Design a multi-tool skill for [workflow]. Include dependencies, validation gates, rollback steps, tool selection rules, error handling, and test cases.