Ink and Agency Skill Pack

An opinionated library of reusable prompt skills for Claude and compatible agents.

The pack is built to work well with Claude-compatible skill loading, but most of the content is deliberately plain Markdown and easy to adapt to other prompt-driven agents. Each folder is a self-contained skill, so you can browse the pack like a catalog instead of reading a giant manual.

Part of the Ink and Agency ecosystem: These skills work alongside the Ink and Agency Agents Collection for focused capabilities and deep domain expertise.

What’s in the pack

• Practical skills for writing, planning, triage, architecture, and workspace workflows
• One SKILL.md entry point per skill folder
• Supporting docs where a skill needs examples, formats, or deeper guidance
• A structure that works directly with Claude and can usually be adapted to other agents with light changes

Skill Map

Area	Example skills	What they help with
Writing & messaging	writing-humanize, writing-tone-check, writing-apology-calibrator, writing-social-script	Composing long-form text, calibrating outgoing messages, scripting awkward conversations
Analysis	break-it-down, codebase-explain, issue-triage	Making sense of a codebase, decoding incoming messages, diagnosing bugs faster
Collaboration	clarity-council, grill-me, grill-with-docs	Getting sharper decisions through structured discussion
Planning	sprint-plan, sprint-review, daily-briefing, handoff	Organizing work, progress, reporting, and context continuity
Focus & state	task-initiation, hyperfocus-recovery, idea-decision-maker, energy-budget, meeting-decompression	Defeating stalls, recovering context, calibrating load — built with ND-friendly defaults
Git & workflow	branch-rebase, branch-resolve-conflicts	Clean rebases with trivial conflict auto-resolution, complex conflict resolution with intent preservation
Workspace tools	obsidian-vault, obsidian-markdown, obsidian-canvas	Managing notes, structure, and visual knowledge maps

Quick Start

For Claude, clone this repository into your skills directory:

git clone git@github.com:risadams/skills.git "$HOME/.claude/skills"

That’s it. Once the repo is in place, Claude can discover the skills directly from the folder structure.

If you are using another agent, the same folder layout is still useful, but the install location and invocation rules may differ.

Check the install

After cloning, you should see paths like these:

• $HOME/.claude/skills/writing-humanize/SKILL.md
• $HOME/.claude/skills/clarity-council/SKILL.md
• $HOME/.claude/skills/codebase-explain/SKILL.md

Using skills

There is no separate run command.

In Claude, skills are triggered in chat by asking for the behavior you want. A few examples:

• Use writing-humanize on this paragraph.
• Use codebase-explain for this module.
• Triage PROJ-1234.
• Run a clarity-council on this design.

In other agents, the same prompts often still work, but you may need to wire the skill files into that agent's own prompt, skill, or tool-loading system.

Skills + Agents: Working Together

This skill pack is part of the Ink and Agency ecosystem and integrates with the companion Agents Collection.

What's the Difference?

	Skill	Agent
Scope	Focused capability	Deep domain specialist
Lifetime	One-off or repetitive	Long-running, persistent
Examples	code-review, writing-humanize	backend-developer, security-auditor
Use when	You need a quick, structured technique	You need complete ownership of a domain

Common Patterns

Pattern 1: Skill + Agent Enhancement
A skill augments an agent's output during workflow:

Backend developer agent 
  → implements API 
  → code-review skill → validated schema

Pattern 2: Skill → Agent Escalation
A skill recognizes deeper work is needed and recommends an agent:

Writing-humanize skill 
  → AI patterns removed 
  → suggests content-quality-editor agent

Pattern 3: Composition
Complex workflows chain multiple skills and agents:

Planning + Skills + Agents
  → sprint-plan skill 
  → project-manager agent 
  → backlog-grooming skill

Finding Related Agents

Each skill can declare related agents in its frontmatter. Look for the related-agents field:

related-agents:
  - code-reviewer
  - security-auditor

For complete integration details, see INTEGRATION.md.

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Compatibility

This pack is Claude-compatible first, but it is not Claude-only.

Most skills in this repo are prompt assets with a stable folder structure, so they usually port cleanly to other agents. In practice, you may need to adjust:

• Install location, because other agents may not read from .claude/skills
• Frontmatter fields, if another agent expects different metadata keys
• Tool names or allowed-tool lists, if the target agent exposes a different tool model
• Invocation patterns, if the target agent uses commands, slash prompts, or manifests instead of folder discovery

If an agent can read Markdown prompt files and route on instructions, the content itself usually needs little or no rewriting. The main work is usually integration, not rewriting the skill.

Browse the catalog

The full inventory lives in CLAUDE.md. That file is the source of truth for the skill list and descriptions, which keeps this README short and prevents drift.

Release notes

• v1.2 (2026-06-17)
  • Communication & interpretation: break-it-down (helps neuro-divergent minds decode messages and intent)
  • Code analysis & understanding: codebase-explain, codebase-improve-architecture, codebase-churn, issue-triage, issue-dup-find, issue-estimate-sp, issue-feature-breakdown, issue-suggest-component
  • Collaboration & decisions: clarity-council, grill-me, grill-with-docs, idea-generate, idea-choice, idea-decision-maker
  • Git & merge workflows: branch-rebase, branch-resolve-conflicts (now with full intent preservation for complex conflicts)
  • Planning & reporting: sprint-plan, sprint-review, sprint-snapshot, sprint-sos-report, daily-briefing, daily-standup-prep, good-morning
  • Writing workflows: writing-draft-article, writing-shape, writing-fragments, writing-beats, writing-cold-open, writing-humanize, writing-tone-check, writing-apology-calibrator, writing-social-script, writing-rejection-sensitivity-check
  • Workspace & knowledge: obsidian-vault, obsidian-markdown, obsidian-canvas, obsidian-charts, obsidian-bases, obsidian-cli, defuddle
  • Utilities: hyperfocus-recovery, task-initiation, time-reality-check, energy-budget, interest-capture, meeting-decompression, rejection-sensitivity-check, handoff, request-refactor-plan, skill-create
  • Updated Skills + Agents section with integration patterns and related-agents field documentation
• v1.1 (2026-05-19)
  • New writing-* siblings for outgoing messages: writing-tone-check, writing-apology-calibrator, writing-rejection-sensitivity-check, writing-social-script, writing-cold-open
  • New Focus & state skills: task-initiation, hyperfocus-recovery, time-reality-check, idea-decision-maker (renamed from decision-breaker), energy-budget, interest-capture, meeting-decompression
• v1.0 (2026-05-18)
  • Initial public release of the skills pack

Contributing notes

This is an unsupported personal project. Fork freely, but no PRs are accepted.

For project conventions, naming schemes, and layout rules, see CONTRIBUTING.md.