Author your own

Use this when

You have run bassclef for a few weeks and you keep doing something by hand that a skill would automate. You want to write the skill and maybe contribute it back.

Skip this when

You are still adopting the framework. The tightest 3 and the starter 7 cover most first-month needs. Author-your-own is a month-2 concern.

The 30-line worked example

Say you have noticed you always run three commands in sequence when you kick off a session: /whereami, /sprint, then start the goal. You want a /bootup skill that does all three.

Type in Claude Code:

/skill compose /bootup — runs /whereami then /sprint at session start

Claude reads the pattern, drafts a conforming SKILL.md file, and places it under .claude/skills/bootup/SKILL.md. Take a look:

---
name: bootup
description: Session-start bootstrap — run /whereami then /sprint
  in sequence before any substantive work.
tier: lite
disable_model_invocation: false
---

## Procedure

1. Dispatch `/whereami` and wait for output.
2. Dispatch `/sprint` and wait for output.
3. Return a one-line summary of the current phase and next work item.

Total: about 15 lines of frontmatter and body. Save the file. Restart your Claude Code session. Type /bootup — the harness picks it up because the file is on disk with the required shape.

That is the whole cycle. You wrote a skill in under 5 minutes.

When to promote upstream

If the skill you wrote solves a problem other bassclef adopters would have, propose it upstream. Type:

/promote

/promote reads the skill, writes a proposal issue on the bassclef repo, and tags it with bassclef-evolution. Upstream triages on their own cadence.

Not every skill belongs upstream. Skills specific to your codebase, your team, or your workflow stay in your repo. Skills that generalize across at least three adopter shapes are candidates.

When to ship a /ticket instead

If the pattern you noticed is not yet a skill but is an idea for one, type:

/ticket

This composes an INVEST-shaped ticket on your repo (or upstream if you point --target sunj-labs/bassclef). The ticket lives as tracking without you having to write the skill yet.

Where next

• Browse the Skills catalog to see what already exists
• Read the /promote docs for the full promotion protocol
• Read the /skill docs for the full authoring procedure

Skills you write and keep local do not need any of the above. Just save the file and use the skill.