Skills Format

How skills are structured, stored, and organized.

File Structure

Skills are stored as markdown files in ~/.claude/skills/, organized by project:

~/.claude/skills/
├── www-myapp/
│   ├── nextjs-clerk-auth.md
│   ├── drizzle-orm-setup.md
│   └── .archive/
│       └── nextjs-clerk-auth-v1.md
├── api-backend/
│   └── github-actions-ci.md
└── registry.json

Skill Template

Every skill follows the same structure:

---
name: nextjs-clerk-auth
description: Set up Clerk authentication in Next.js 14
version: 2
project: www-myapp
created: 2026-05-20
updated: 2026-05-24
---

## Prerequisites
- Next.js 14+ project with App Router
- Clerk account with API keys

## Steps
1. Install dependencies
2. Configure environment variables
3. Set up middleware
...

Quality Standards

Specific but agnostic:concrete steps, not tied to one codebase
Reusable:works in any matching project
Atomic:one skill, one task, one outcome
Self-contained:no external dependencies
End-to-end:complete replay flow

Registry

The registry.json file maintains an index of all skills. Rebuilt automatically by /skilltrace:reindex.