Generate Project-Specific Skills

Analyze an existing codebase and interview the developer to produce project-specific Agent Skills (SKILL.md files) that teach IDE agents how to write code matching the project's conventions.

This skill works for ANY codebase — not just SerpentStack. The output is a

.skills/

directory following the Agent Skills open standard (agentskills.io).

When to Use

• The user has an existing project and wants agents to understand their conventions
• The user says "generate skills," "create skills for my project," or "make my agent understand my codebase"
• The user wants a

  .skills/

  directory for a project that doesn't have one

Phase 1: Codebase Discovery

Before asking questions, read the codebase to come prepared. Reduce burden on the developer by finding answers yourself first.

1. Read project structure:

   ls -R

   or

   find . -type f -name "*.py" -o -name "*.ts" -o -name "*.js" | head -50

2. Read config files:

   package.json

   ,

   pyproject.toml

   ,

   Cargo.toml

   ,

   go.mod

   ,

   Makefile

   ,

   docker-compose.yml

3. Read existing context files:

   .cursorrules

   ,

   CLAUDE.md

   ,

   .github/copilot-instructions.md

   ,

   CONTRIBUTING.md

4. Read 2-3 representative source files: a model/entity, a service/controller, a test file, a route/handler
5. Read the test setup:

   conftest.py

   ,

   jest.config

   ,

   vitest.config

   , test fixtures

From this, form hypotheses about:

• Language, framework, and major dependencies
• Project structure (where models, services, routes, tests live)
• Transaction/database patterns
• Auth approach
• Test infrastructure
• API patterns (REST, GraphQL, RPC)
• Frontend patterns (if applicable)

Phase 2: Developer Interview

Use AskUserQuestion to confirm hypotheses and uncover conventions that aren't visible in code. Ask 5-8 rounds of questions. Do not ask obvious questions — you already read the code. Ask about the WHY and the EDGE CASES.

Round 1: Confirm Architecture

Present what you found and ask for corrections:

"I've read your codebase. Here's what I see:

• [framework] with [database] and [test framework]
• Services in

  [path]

  , routes in

  [path]

  , models in

  [path]

• Auth via [approach]
• Tests use [infrastructure]

Is this accurate? What am I missing?"

Round 2: Transaction & Data Patterns

Ask about the patterns agents most commonly get wrong:

• "Who owns the transaction boundary — the service layer, the route/controller, or a middleware?"
• "Do services raise HTTP exceptions, or do they return domain values that the route layer translates?"
• "How do you handle not-found vs. not-authorized in service returns?"

Round 3: Auth & Authorization

• "How does a route know who the current user is? Dependency injection, middleware, decorator?"
• "How is ownership enforced on update/delete? Per-route check, service layer, or policy object?"
• "What's the shape of your user/identity object that protected routes receive?"

Round 4: Testing Conventions

• "Do tests hit a real database or use mocks? If real, how is isolation handled?"
• "Are there shared fixtures or test helpers? What do they provide?"
• "What's the pattern for authenticated test requests?"

Round 5: Frontend (if applicable)

• "How do frontend components call the API? Raw fetch, typed client, generated SDK?"
• "How are types kept in sync with the backend? Manual, codegen, shared schema?"
• "What state management pattern do you use? Context, Redux, Zustand, signals?"

Round 6: Deploy & CI

• "What does your deploy pipeline look like? Docker, serverless, PaaS?"
• "What checks run in CI? Lint, typecheck, test, build?"
• "Is there a single command to verify everything locally before pushing?"

Round 7: Conventions Agents Get Wrong

This is the most important question:

"When you've used AI agents to write code, what do they consistently get wrong? What do you find yourself correcting repeatedly?"

This directly identifies what the skills need to encode.

Round 8: Priorities

"Which of these would be most valuable as skills for your project?"

• Scaffold (adding new resources/features end-to-end)
• Auth (protecting routes, understanding the auth system)
• Test (writing and running tests correctly)
• Database (migrations, schema changes)
• Deploy (build, push, deploy workflow)
• Dev server (error detection, common fixes)
• Git workflow (branches, commits, PRs)
• [Other based on what you've learned]

Phase 3: Generate Skills

Based on the interview, generate SKILL.md files. Each skill must:

Follow the Agent Skills Standard

---
name: skill-name-matching-directory
description: "What it does and when to use it. Be specific about trigger conditions."
---

• name

  : lowercase, hyphens, matches parent directory name, max 64 chars

• description

  : max 1024 chars, include both purpose AND trigger conditions

Be Project-Specific, Not Generic

Bad (generic):

Services should handle business logic and return appropriate values.

Good (project-specific):

Services call `await db.flush()` but never `db.commit()`. Return values:
- Domain object: success
- `None`: not found
- `False`: not authorized
The route handler calls `await db.commit()` after successful mutations.

Include Complete Templates

For scaffold skills, include the actual file templates with:

• Real import paths from this project
• Real type signatures
• Real test patterns matching existing tests
• Placeholders only for the resource name (

  {Name}

  ,

  {name}

  )

Include Verification Steps

Every skill ends with how to verify the work:

## Verification
[Specific commands to run, expected outputs]

Phase 4: Write Files

Create the

.skills/

directory with the generated skills:

.skills/
  scaffold/SKILL.md      # if prioritized
  auth/SKILL.md          # if prioritized
  test/SKILL.md          # if prioritized
  db-migrate/SKILL.md    # if prioritized
  deploy/SKILL.md        # if prioritized
  dev-server/SKILL.md    # if prioritized
  git-workflow/SKILL.md  # if prioritized
  find-skills/SKILL.md   # always include — teaches agents to discover and create new skills

Phase 5: Verify with Developer

Present the generated skills for review. Use AskUserQuestion:

"I've generated [N] skills for your project. Here's a summary of each:

• scaffold/SKILL.md

  : [one-line summary]

• auth/SKILL.md

  : [one-line summary]
• ...

Would you like to review any of these in detail before I write them? Or should I write them all and you can edit afterward?"

Reference

For detailed guidance on writing effective project-specific skills, see SKILL-AUTHORING.md in the SerpentStack repository. Key principles:

• Encode conventions agents get wrong, skip things linters catch
• Complete templates beat descriptions
• Show the full chain (model -> service -> route -> test), not just parts
• Skills should compose — reference each other, don't duplicate
• Test by starting a fresh agent session and asking it to do the task