agent-skills
Single source of truth for custom agent skills + commands. Shared across Claude Code and Codex, every machine.
Layout
skills/ # SKILL.md dirs — Claude Code AND Codex both read these (open Agent Skills standard)
commands/ # slash commands — Claude Code only (Codex ignores)
hooks/ # Claude Code hooks — see hooks/README.md, wiring is manual
claude-md/ # CLAUDE.md fragments — linked to ~/.claude/, imported via @name.md
bin/link.sh # bootstrap symlinks for non-Nix machines
nix/home.nix # home-manager module for NixOS machines
flake.nix # exposes homeModules.default
Skills are portable: only name+description frontmatter is required by both tools; Claude-only fields (user-invocable, args) are ignored by Codex. Cross-skill refs use root-relative paths (linear-common/COMMON.md), so they resolve under ~/.claude/skills and ~/.agents/skills alike.
Install
Non-Nix machine (e.g. dev VM)
git clone https://git.naps.pt/yolo/agent-skills.git ~/tea/yolo/agent-skills
~/tea/yolo/agent-skills/bin/link.sh
Symlinks each skill into ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/, commands into ~/.claude/commands/, hooks into ~/.claude/hooks/, claude-md/ fragments into ~/.claude/. Idempotent; any pre-existing real dir is moved to ~/.agent-skills-backup/ (outside the discovery path, so it isn't picked up as a duplicate skill). Re-run after adding a skill.
Hooks and fragments need one manual step each: the settings.json snippet in hooks/README.md, and an @writing.md import line in your ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. Codex needs no step — ~/.agents/AGENTS.md is linked directly.
NixOS machine (home-manager)
# flake inputs
inputs.agent-skills.url = "git+https://git.naps.pt/yolo/agent-skills.git";
# home config imports
imports = [ inputs.agent-skills.homeModules.default ];
recursive = true links files individually, so machine-local skills can coexist in the same dir. nixos-rebuild switch to apply/update.
Shared machine, many sessions
Several autonomous runs share one box. skills/linear-common/scripts/gate.sh is a machine-wide semaphore for heavy commands (full test suites, whole-project builds): bounded slots, memory + CPU cap via a systemd user scope, pinned build/test parallelism. Skills run scoped checks in the inner loop and put only the once-per-push full suite through the gate; exit 75 means it never ran and CI takes over. Policy lives in linear-common/COMMON.md under "Local verification budget".
~/.claude/skills/linear-common/scripts/gate.sh --status
AGENT_GATE_SLOTS=3 AGENT_GATE_MEM_MAX=4G ~/.claude/skills/linear-common/scripts/gate.sh -- cargo test
Adding a skill
Drop a new skills/<name>/SKILL.md (+ optional scripts/, references/, assets/). Commit. Non-Nix: re-run bin/link.sh. Nix: rebuild.
Skills
| skill | what |
|---|---|
work |
tracker issue → worktree → PR → hands off to land |
yolo |
quick ship; optional land handoff |
land |
drive an open PR to green + ready-to-merge; user clicks merge (canonical CI/review loop) |
blitz |
drive a whole milestone to done |
nightshift |
hours-long unattended build; architect delegating to subagents, backs off before the 5h limit |
linear-common |
shared config/setup/worktree conventions + local verification budget (dependency of work/yolo/blitz/nightshift) |
crit, humanizer, impeccable, improve-codebase-architecture |
misc |
Writing contract
One contract, claude-md/writing.md, linked three ways: ~/.claude/writing.md
(imported via @writing.md), ~/.agents/AGENTS.md (Codex, which has no
@import), and the nix module for NixOS machines.
The rule it encodes is selection, not compression: keep output short by cutting whole ideas that don't change what the reader does next, then write what survives as plain sentences. Not by dropping articles, abbreviating, or writing fragments — that is shorter and worse. Anthropic's Fable 5 and Opus 5 prompting guides both say this explicitly.
Two enforcers in hooks/:
| enforcer | scope |
|---|---|
comms-lint.py |
GitHub issues/PRs/review comments — 150 words (hard cap 300), evidence in <details>, no reviewer-addressing opener, plain diction |
comment-lint.py |
code comments — 1-3 lines, volume and purpose, not wording |
Written in the voice it asks for, and leads with a worked example of each.
Prompt style leaks into output style, and examples steer harder than
prohibitions, so the file is short and shows rather than forbids. Prose alone
drifts; the linters make it binding. Details in hooks/README.md.