Skills System

Reusable skill prompts that encode best practices and workflows

What Are Skills?

Skills are reusable prompt patterns that encode best practices, workflows, and decision frameworks. They're not agents—they're methodologies that any agent can invoke to handle common situations consistently.

Think of it this way: Agents are who does the work. Skills are how they do it.

Skills vs. Agents

Aspect	Agents	Skills
Purpose	Domain expertise	Workflow methodology
Invocation	@ mention or dispatch	Explicit skill call
Persistence	Full session context	Single task scope
Customization	Per-project persona	Parameterized templates
Example	@backend builds an API	test-driven-development structures the approach

Skill Categories

Fulcrum skills are organized by their role in the development lifecycle:

Discovery Skills

Used at the start of work to explore scope and validate approach:

inception-facilitator — Multi-phase product discovery for greenfield projects
brainstorming — Structured exploration before any creative work

Never skip discovery. The brainstorming skill exists because jumping straight to implementation is the #1 cause of rework. Use it before creating features, building components, or modifying behavior.

Planning Skills

Structure work before execution begins:

work-triage — Analyze requests, determine priority, route to agents
work-tracker — Create and manage Beads work items
writing-plans — Create implementation plans from specs

Implementation Skills

Guide how code gets written:

test-driven-development — Write tests before implementation
frontend-design — Create production-grade UI with high design quality
systematic-debugging — Structured approach to bug investigation
subagent-driven-development — Execute plans with parallel sub-agents

Review Skills

Quality assurance and handoff:

code-reviewer — Review against quality, security, and performance standards
council-review — Facilitate peer review dialogue between agents
pr-creator — Create comprehensive PRs from git changes
quality-gate-checker — Validate readiness for handoffs and deployment

How to Invoke Skills

Skills are invoked through the skill tool or by explicit mention in your prompt:

# Method 1: Direct skill invocation
Use the brainstorming skill for this feature request

# Method 2: Skill tool call
skill: "test-driven-development"

# Method 3: Implicit (skill auto-activates based on context)
"Create a new React component for user profiles"
→ frontend-design skill activates automatically

Skills vs. Commands

Opinion: Use skills for methodology, commands for actions. If you're deciding how to approach something, that's a skill. If you're executing a specific action, that's a command.

Use Case	Skill	Command
Start a new feature	brainstorming	—
Create work items	work-tracker	/work-triage
Execute a plan	executing-plans	/execute-work
Review code	code-reviewer	—
Create a PR	pr-creator	/pr-create

Skill Chaining

Skills often chain together in natural workflows:

Feature Development Flow:
1. brainstorming          → Explore requirements
2. writing-plans          → Create implementation plan
3. test-driven-development → Write tests first
4. executing-plans        → Implement with sub-agents
5. code-reviewer          → Review changes
6. pr-creator             → Create pull request

Creating Custom Skills

Skills live in .claude/skills/ (or equivalent per vendor). Each skill is a markdown file with structured sections:

# my-custom-skill.md

## Trigger
When the user asks to [specific scenario]

## Methodology
1. First, always [step 1]
2. Then, verify [step 2]
3. Finally, output [step 3]

## Constraints
- Never skip [important thing]
- Always include [required element]

## Examples
[Show input/output examples]

Pro tip: The best skills encode tribal knowledge that would otherwise be lost. If you find yourself repeatedly explaining the same approach to junior devs, that's a skill waiting to be written.

Next Steps

Skills define methodology, but Work Orchestration defines how multiple agents execute in parallel with proper dependency management.