SKILLs

A library of reusable agent skills: each is a SKILL.md procedure an LLM coding agent loads and follows, project-agnostic and self-contained in one directory.

Install them with npx skills, as a Claude Code plugin, or as a git submodule.

Available skills

Skill	Purpose
advisor	Reads a research project like a principal investigator: what it combines, what is outdated, what your lab can afford, and the cheapest experiment that settles each claim.
aesthete	Designs, builds, and reviews web interfaces that meet WCAG 2.2, honor a supplied brand or design system, and avoid the templated look of generated UI.
author-skill	Turns a task history, workflow, or procedure into a reusable SKILL.md that another agent can follow with no memory of the original session.
caveman	Compresses replies into terse phrasing that keeps every technical fact, and can rewrite a prose file in place.
fact-check	Checks a document claim by claim against retrieved sources, with quotes behind every verdict, and changes nothing until you approve each correction.
git-commit	Drafts and reviews Conventional Commits messages, and can commit and push in one step.
humanize	Rewrites AI-sounding prose so it reads like its writer, keeping every claim's original strength.
lit-review	Produces a literature review in which every citation traces to a paper retrieved from OpenAlex, arXiv, or Crossref, never memory.
peer-review	Reviews a paper the way an adverse referee would, pressing on claims, design, analysis, limitations, and novelty.
pl-theorist	Brings a programming-languages theorist's discipline to design, code, review, and tests, tuned per language.
ponder	Answers an open question and shows its work, sourcing every load-bearing claim and testing the strongest rival explanation.
ponytail	Forces the laziest solution that works: standard library and native features before custom code or new dependencies.
read-pdf	Extracts text and metadata from a PDF and answers questions about it with page-cited evidence, without OCR.
reframe	Turns a planning discussion into a testable direction judgment with costed routes and the evidence that would prove it wrong.
search-web	Searches the web, Wikipedia, and the scholarly record when the harness has no search tool, and pulls the readable text out of a page.
setup-env	Provisions a project's development toolchain in userspace, with no sudo, no docker, and nothing assumed present but uv.
summon	Hands work to another agent: whether to delegate, what to tell the delegate, how to keep parallel agents apart, and how to judge what comes back.
thematic-analysis	Develops themes from qualitative text under one named school, each theme backed by verbatim extracts and counts.

Installing

With a skills manager

Install every skill, or pick individual ones, into whichever agents you use:

npx skills add BTreeMap/SKILLs --all
npx skills add BTreeMap/SKILLs --skill fact-check --skill git-commit

As a Claude Code plugin

claude plugin marketplace add BTreeMap/SKILLs
claude plugin install btm-skills@btm-skills

As a git submodule

Pins an exact commit and updates on your schedule; the bundled sync workflow below automates the update. Add the library at .github/skills and alias it for Claude:

(
  set -eu
  if git submodule status -- .github/skills >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo "Already recorded: repairing the checkout to the recorded pointer."
    git submodule update --init -- .github/skills
  else
    echo "Adding the skills submodule."
    git submodule add https://github.com/BTreeMap/SKILLs.git .github/skills
  fi
  mkdir -p .claude
  ln -sfn ../.github/skills .claude/skills
  git add -- .gitmodules .claude/skills .github/skills
  if git diff --cached --quiet -- .gitmodules .claude/skills .github/skills; then
    echo "Already up to date."
  else
    git commit -m "chore: Add agent skills submodule" \
      -- .gitmodules .claude/skills .github/skills
  fi
)

The block is safe to re-run; advancing the recorded pointer is a separate step (see Staying current).

Clone consuming projects with submodules included:

git clone --recurse-submodules <your-repo-url>
# or, on an existing checkout:
git submodule update --init --recursive

Staying current

Manually

This route needs neither a third-party action nor extra permissions:

git submodule update --remote -- .github/skills
git commit -m "chore(skills): Bump skills submodule" -- .github/skills

Automatically

The bundled workflow fast-forwards the .github/skills pointer to the upstream tip twice a day, one commit per configured branch (default: main, master, dev):

(
  set -eu
  mkdir -p .github/workflows
  if [ ! -e .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml ]; then
    echo "Installing the sync workflow."
    cp .github/skills/sync-skills.example.yml .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml
  elif ! cmp -s .github/skills/sync-skills.example.yml \
      .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml; then
    echo "sync-skills.yml differs from the bundled example; leaving it as is." >&2
  fi
  git add -- .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml
  if git diff --cached --quiet -- .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml; then
    echo "Already up to date."
  else
    git commit -m "chore: Enable agent skills auto-sync workflow" \
      -- .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml
  fi
)

Copy the workflow in as a real file: GitHub Actions silently ignores symlinked files under .github/workflows.

The workflow is third-party code running with contents: write. Its containment:

• No checkout: the jobs never clone, so no submodule code or git hook runs.
• Split token: a read-only job decides the bump; a contents: write job only commits and moves the ref.
• Commits go through the Git Data API with no author, committer, or signature, so GitHub signs them with its own key and a Require signed commits ruleset passes with no stored key or bypass actor.
• The upstream is the URL the branch records for the gitlink, so a fork works unchanged; upstream-url and upstream-ref override it.

If your organization restricts third-party actions, allowlist BTreeMap/SKILLs/.github/workflows/sync-skills.yml@main.

Repository layout

<skill-name>/SKILL.md          canonical; one directory per skill
skills/<skill-name>            vendor-neutral hub; one symlink per skill
.github/skills -> ../skills    GitHub Copilot, and the submodule mount
.claude/skills -> ../skills    Claude Code
.claude-plugin/                plugin and marketplace manifests

Every vendor path is one symlink to skills/, so adding an agent costs one link. Edit skills at the root; the CI gate maintains the aliases and the skill list in marketplace.json.

Git preserves symlinks on Linux and macOS; on Windows, enable Developer Mode or configure Git to create symlinks before cloning.

Contributing

Conventions, the CI gate, and the frontmatter protocol live in AGENTS.md; the authoring procedure is author-skill. CI repairs mechanical findings (formatting, ordering, aliases) on every push and fails only on what needs a person.

License

MIT