Writes the description field that makes a skill fire reliably - WHAT it does, WHEN to invoke it with quoted user phrasing, and what it is NOT for. Use when drafting or improving only the description or trigger of a SKILL.md or catalog entry - "this skill never fires", "fix this description", "write the frontmatter description". Do NOT use to author a whole skill (use skill-creator) or to grade/audit one (use skill-auditor).
Click to play with sound.
---
name: Skill Description Writer
description: Writes the description field that makes a skill fire reliably - WHAT it does, WHEN to invoke it with quoted user phrasing, and what it is NOT for. Use when drafting or improving only the description or trigger of a SKILL.md or catalog entry - "this skill never fires", "fix this description", "write the frontmatter description". Do NOT use to author a whole skill (use skill-creator) or to grade/audit one (use skill-auditor).
---
# Skill Description Writer
Crafts the description field that determines whether a skill is ever selected. A weak description means the skill never fires; an overloaded one fires on the wrong tasks. This is the highest-leverage line in any skill: the body only matters if the description gets it loaded.
## Inputs to collect
1. What the skill produces (its deliverable, one sentence).
2. Three or more phrases a real user would type when they need it - in the user's words, not the author's.
3. The nearest neighbor skills a request could confuse it with.
If the author cannot supply real user phrasing, derive candidates from the body's deliverable and triggers, and mark them for validation with skill-tester.
## The three-part formula
Every description contains these parts, in this order:
1. **WHAT** - one tight sentence naming the capability in active third person: "Generates a zero-downtime database migration plan."
2. **WHEN** - concrete trigger conditions, quoting real user phrasing where possible: "Use when adding columns, altering types, dropping tables, or backfilling data on a live schema" or "Triggers on 'is this term sheet fair', 'liquidation preference', 'board seats'."
3. **NOT** - negative scope routing to the named neighbor, whenever a plausible confusion exists: "Do NOT use for offline schema redesign - use database-schema instead."
… install to load the full skill