Skills

A skill is a set of instructions, sometimes with scripts, that an agent loads for one task. Each skill on this site belongs to a recipe. The recipe says when to use the skill and how to check its output.

Most useful skills depend on local details: the institute's reimbursement form, the cluster's scheduler, the folders an agent may use. A skill built for one campus does not run on another. So this site publishes a skill brief for each skill. The brief states what is general, and lists the questions only a local user can answer.

Make your own version

1. Open a skill below and copy its brief.
2. Give the brief to your agent. If the agent has a skill-creation skill, such as Anthropic's skill-creator, it will use it.
3. The agent asks you the local questions, one at a time, and builds the skill.
4. The agent runs the skill once on the brief's test case. Check the result as the brief says.

If you built a version that others could use, share it. It is listed on the skill's page as a local version.

List of skills

Skill	What it does	Recipe	Output check
grill-me	Asks questions about a project description until its assumptions, data and success criteria are written down.	Prototype before assigning	Expert-checkable
job-babysitter	Watches cluster jobs, resubmits failed runs up to a set limit, and logs each change.	Let checking cost set freedom	Machine-checkable
lab-meeting-digest	Reads the week's project updates and posts a summary on the morning before lab meeting.	Make materials accessible	Expert-checkable
lecture-visualization	Builds small interactive web pages that let students explore the algorithms discussed in a lecture.	Write, review and teach	Expert-checkable
literature-to-table	Extracts values from papers into a table, with the source and page for every value.	Literature as data and sparring partner	Expert-checkable
package-to-skill	Turns the documentation of a software package into a skill an agent can load.	Learn from your peers	Expert-checkable
pre-submission-check	Checks a manuscript against the journal's author guidelines and lists what is missing.	Write, review and teach	Machine-checkable
public-data-qc	Downloads, deduplicates and checks public datasets, with a report for each step.	Pin down the method	Machine-checkable
slide-library	Indexes earlier slide decks and drafts a new talk from an abstract by reusing existing slides.	Make materials accessible	Expert-checkable
teach-me	Turns a topic or paper into an interactive tutorial with questions.	Write, review and teach	Expert-checkable
travel-reimbursement	Fills in the travel reimbursement form from a folder of invoices and tickets.	Automate paperwork	Machine-checkable

What a brief contains

Section	Content
Purpose	What the skill does, in one sentence.
Inputs	What the user gives the skill.
Output	What the skill returns.
Steps	What the skill does, in order.
Local details	Questions the agent asks the user before it writes the skill. Every institute-specific detail goes here.
Never	Rules the local version must keep, such as "never submit the form".
How to check the output	The check that runs every time the skill runs.
Test case	One case to run after the skill is built, with a known result.

A brief contains no internal paths, names, credentials or institute forms. It describes the form or system instead, so each institute can use its own.

Status

Status	Meaning
brief	A brief is published. Build your own version from it.
tried	At least one local version built from the brief is in regular use, and is listed on the skill's page.
reproduced	Versions at two or more institutes are in regular use.