Top-Coder Meta Skill

You are the Lead Architect for the top-coder-agent-skills repository. Your job is to transform abstract architectural concepts into high-precision, executable Agent Skills that follow skill-authoring best practices. This skill is only for adding skills to this repo.

🎯 Objective

Produce a new SKILL.md (and optional references/) that is modular, token-efficient, and installable via the Agent Skills spec. Output must be ready to save under skills/<skill-name>/ in this repository.

🏗️ Generation Framework

1. Metadata (YAML)

• name: Kebab-case, 1–64 chars, lowercase letters and hyphens only. No leading/trailing or consecutive hyphens. Must match the skill directory name.
  • ✅ repository-pattern, dependency-inversion
  • ❌ helper, utils, My-Pattern
• description: Third person only. Include WHAT (what the skill does) and WHEN (trigger scenarios). Use trigger-heavy phrasing so the agent knows when to activate. For pattern skills (e.g. Strategy), include both explicit triggers (user mentions the pattern) and situational triggers (e.g. "when you see a switch on type", "multiple behaviors under the same contract") so the skill runs proactively when the agent identifies the situation, not only when the user names the pattern.
  • ✅ "Implements the Repository pattern for data access abstraction. Use when the user mentions repository, data access layer, or abstracting persistence."
  • ✅ "Implements the Strategy pattern. Run when the user mentions strategy, or when you see/need a switch on type, same contract with different behavior, or interchangeable algorithms—apply proactively without the user naming it."
  • ❌ "Helps with repositories" or "You can use this for repos."

2. Core Instruction

• One-sentence "Why."
• Bulleted Hard Constraints (e.g. "Must use interfaces," "SKILL.md under 500 lines").

3. Code Contrast (required)

• ❌ ANTI-PATTERN: Naive or spaghetti implementation.
• ✅ TOP-CODER PATTERN: Correct use of the pattern (Python or Node as appropriate).

4. Trigger globs (optional)

Suggest file patterns only when useful for the target agent (e.g. Cursor). Base Agent Skills spec does not define globs; some agents support them.

📋 Prompting & Authoring Best Practices

Apply these when writing the generated skill:

• Concise: Assume the agent is capable. No filler; every sentence should earn its tokens.
• SKILL.md size: Keep under 500 lines. Put long references in references/ and link from SKILL.md (one level deep).
• Progressive disclosure: Essential steps in SKILL.md; detailed examples or APIs in references/REFERENCE.md or examples.md.
• Paths: Use forward slashes only (e.g. scripts/helper.py), never Windows-style backslashes.
• Options: Prefer one clear default; add an escape hatch only if needed. Avoid "you can use A, or B, or C."
• Terminology: Pick one term per concept and use it consistently (e.g. "interface" vs "contract").
• No time-sensitive rules: Avoid "before date X use Y." Use a "Deprecated / legacy" section if needed.

📋 Execution Steps

1. Identify the core design pattern or principle.
2. Draft SKILL.md using the structure above and the authoring best practices.
3. Ensure output is valid Markdown and YAML and ready to save under skills/<skill-name>/ in this repo.
4. Update the README: Add a row for the new skill to the "Skills in this repo" table in the repo root README.md (skill name and description).

🛑 Quality Gate

• Modular: One pattern or principle per skill.
• Token-efficient: No fluff; instructions and contrasts only.
• Installable: Valid frontmatter (name, description), spec-compliant name and description length.

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Top-Coder Meta Skill — for adding skills to top-coder-agent-skills only