Author your own
How to write a bassclef skill from a paragraph, and how to propose it back to bassclef when it earns a place.
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 three and the workhorses 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 startClaude 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 propose it back to bassclef
If the skill you wrote solves a problem other bassclef adopters would have, propose it back to the shared bassclef repo. Type:
/promote/promote reads the skill, writes a proposal issue on the bassclef
repo (sunj-labs/bassclef, where the shared skills, rules, and hooks
live), and tags it with bassclef-evolution. The bassclef maintainers
triage on their own cadence.
Not every skill belongs in the shared repo. 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:
/ticketThis composes an INVEST-shaped ticket on your repo (or on the shared
bassclef repo 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
/promotedocs for the full promotion protocol - Read the
/skilldocs 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.
The workhorses
The skills you invoke every session once the tightest 3 feel comfortable — the discipline-driving loop.
/howdoi
Search bassclef skills and rules for an adopter goal — LLM-assisted. Two modes — search (top matches) and compose (matches plus suggested chains). Ranks by semantic fit and cites what each match does.