Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Writing Skills
## Overview
**Writing skills IS Test-Driven Development applied to process documentation.**
**Personal skills live in your runtime's skills directory**
You write test cases (pressure scenarios with subagents), watch them fail (baseline behavior), write the skill (documentation), watch tests pass (agents comply), and refactor (close loopholes).
**Core principle:** If you didn't watch an agent fail without the skill, you don't know if the skill teaches the right thing.
**REQUIRED BACKGROUND:** You MUST understand superpowers:test-driven-development before using this skill. That skill defines the fundamental RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle. This skill adapts TDD to documentation.
**Official guidance:** For Anthropic's official skill authoring best practices, see anthropic-best-practices.md. This document provides additional patterns and guidelines that complement the TDD-focused approach in this skill.
## What is a Skill?
A **skill** is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Skills help future agents find and apply effective approaches.
**Skills are:** Reusable techniques, patterns, tools, reference guides
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The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260702.9dc0119, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
A 17 of 17 checks passed. Fixed automatic checks with no AI involved, so the same checks give the same answer every run.
pass: Frontmatter block present
pass: Frontmatter declares a name
pass: Frontmatter declares a description
pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (26431 bytes)
pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
pass: No credential-shaped string
pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
pass: No text hidden with inline styles
pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
pass: No link to a raw IP address
pass: No script tag
Source
GitHub
jdanigo/hydraia · 8 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-24 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_5xzovo36zget45wn
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=jdanigo/hydraia/writing-skills
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/6b8d08fe863318be8480ae8428e169640309fa9208df84bb0510012764454146
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
jdanigo/hydraia · codex/skills/hydraia/SKILL.md · Codex-native hydraia pipeline. Use when the user asks to build, add, implement, or change a feature, brings a…
jdanigo/hydraia · skills/adr/SKILL.md · Use when a design decision is made that is expensive to reverse, affects multiple components, or rejects a plausible…
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jdanigo/hydraia · skills/api-design/SKILL.md · Use when designing or reviewing an API surface — REST, GraphQL, or gRPC. Contract-first methodology: the contract…
jdanigo/hydraia · skills/banner-design/SKILL.md · Design banners for social media, ads, website heroes, creative assets, and print. Multiple art direction options with…
jdanigo/hydraia · skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md · You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying…
jdanigo/hydraia · skills/caveman/SKILL.md · Ultra-compressed communication mode. Cuts token usage ~75% by speaking like caveman while keeping full technical…
jdanigo/hydraia · skills/db-optimization/SKILL.md · Use when the bottleneck is database-shaped — slow queries, lock timeouts, connection exhaustion, N+1 patterns, index…
jdanigo/hydraia · skills/design-to-code/SKILL.md · Elite render-to-code skill. The user brings a finished website design render (jpg/png); this skill distills it into…
a5c-ai/babysitter · library/methodologies/superpowers/skills/writing-skills/SKILL.md · Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment.
coco-research/coco · skills/writing-skills/SKILL.md · Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment
xu123-bob/baize · agent/skills/superpowers/5.1.0/skills/writing-skills/SKILL.md · Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment
jamditis/claude-skills-journalism · superjawn/skills/writing-skills/SKILL.md · Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment
ibrahim-3d/orchestrator-supaconductor · skills/writing-skills/SKILL.md · Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment
