Notes on makingskills that work.
What breaks, what it costs, and how to tell the difference. Written from the failures, because those are the part nobody publishes.
TriggersContextTestingShipping4 posts
TriggersWhy your Claude Code skill does not fire, and how to tellA skill that works when you name it and ignores you otherwise has a description problem, not a logic problem. How to find out which, in about ten minutes.ContextWhat a skill costs you in context, every single turnAn active skill is re-read on every turn. Here is how to find what yours is costing, and how to split it so the reference material loads only when it is needed.TestingTest a Claude skill on a clean machine before you trust itA skill works on the machine it was written on. That tells you almost nothing. A container, a fresh install and twenty minutes tells you what a new user will actually hit.ShippingSkills, CLAUDE.md and MCP: what belongs in whichThree ways to give Claude Code context, and putting a thing in the wrong one is why it gets ignored. A short guide to which is which and when to reach for each.
Reading about itis the slow way.
The skills in the catalogue already do what these posts describe, tested on a clean machine with the numbers published.