Skills¶

Skills are shared workflow definitions that Claude Code loads from the plugin. Each skill is a directory under skills/ containing a SKILL.md file with frontmatter and structured instructions. All skills are namespaced under standard-tooling and invoked as /standard-tooling:<skill-name>.

Each entry below covers what the skill does, when to use it, and its current status — including any tracked work that will substantially change it.

Skill catalogue (at a glance)¶

Skill	Purpose	Status
pr-workflow	Submit a PR, wait for CI green, hand off to user; finalize after merge	Current
publish	Drive library / tooling / documentation release flow (Phases 1–7)	Current
project-issue	Create a well-structured GitHub issue via guided questions	Current
dependency-update	Run the dependency-update workflow	Current
deprecation-triage	Triage deprecation warnings into tracking issues	Current (reviewed 2026-04-23, no changes)
summarize	Decision / operation / stream-of-consciousness summaries; SOC mode is the canonical capture for the fleet	Current

pr-workflow¶

What it does. Submits a PR via st-submit-pr from inside the issue's worktree, waits for CI to go green, fixes any agent-fixable red checks, and hands off to the user for review and merge. After the user reports the merge, runs st-finalize-repo from the worktree to clean up local state.

When to use. When work on a branch is complete and ready for review. Covers "open a PR for this branch" through "PR merged, clean up local state" — but the agent stops between submission and merge; humans review and merge feature/bugfix PRs.

Status. Current. Reflects the worktree convention and the fleet-wide "humans review human PRs" posture as of 2026-04-22. The release-workflow exception (agent merges release PRs via st-merge-when-green) lives in the publish skill, not here.

publish¶

What it does. Drives end-to-end release publishing for library / tooling / documentation repositories. Covers the multi-phase flow: prepare release branch, review + merge, confirm publish, post-publish version bump, dependency-consumer updates, and local finalization. Includes failure handling with issue tracking.

When to use. When preparing and executing a versioned release of a repository that uses the library-release or tagged-release model.

Status. Current. Reflects the seven-phase release flow as of v1.4.5: Phase 4 verifies both publish.yml and docs.yml (#84); Phase 6 closes the tracking issue with a summary (#83); Phase 7 surfaces the consumer-refresh sequence (#105). The host-vs-container split is documented in the skill's own reference section.

project-issue¶

What it does. Guided issue creation that collects issue type, summary, problem/goal, acceptance criteria, and validation steps. Creates the issue in the target repo with a label.

When to use. When creating a new tracked issue that needs standard fields populated consistently.

Status. Current.

dependency-update¶

What it does. Repeatable dependency-update workflow covering signal collection (security alerts, audits, planned upgrades), updating at sources of truth, regenerating lockfiles / exports / generated manifests, running validation, and progressing through the standard PR workflow. Includes failure handling with anchored- dependency records for cases where a dependency must be pinned below the latest acceptable range.

When to use. When updating project dependencies — whether in response to a CVE, a scheduled cycle, or as part of normal maintenance.

Status. Current. Rewritten as part of the skills audit (#114) with concrete per-category commands (Python deps via uv lock, CI action pins, runtime versions, doc toolchain, linters, build tools), st-validate-local as the canonical validation step, structured failure handling via anchored dependency records, and anchor review as a first-class section.

deprecation-triage¶

What it does. Applies the deprecation-warning triage policy: search for an existing issue matching the warning, create a tracking issue if none exists using the standard template, attempt a code-only fix, decide fix-now vs defer-to-next-cycle, and document any suppression with removal criteria. Paired with the detect-deprecation-warnings PostToolUse hook.

When to use. When a deprecation warning surfaces during test output, CI, or regular work. The partner hook triggers this flow automatically when it catches warnings.

Status. Current. Reviewed for currency on 2026-04-23 as part of plugin#59; no changes needed.

summarize¶

What it does. Produces a concise, structured summary in one of three modes:

decisions — summary of decisions made during a session (what, why, alternatives considered, next step)
operations — summary of operations performed (what was touched, what happened, what remains)
soc — stream-of-consciousness capture for context offloading between sessions (triggered by Enter SOC / End SOC)

When to use. When the user explicitly asks for a structured summary, invokes SOC capture, or the skill is invoked via handoff protocols.

Status. Current. Decision A from plugin#58: this skill's SOC mode is the canonical SOC capture mechanism for the fleet. Repo-local references to soc-capture or summarize-soc as skill names are stale pointers — splitting SOC into its own skill was rejected because capture and summary are intertwined here (End SOC triggers the structured summary). The cross-repo references in the-infrastructure-mindset are tracked for cleanup in the-infrastructure-mindset#165.

How skills work — technical¶

Each skill is a directory under skills/ containing:

SKILL.md — required. Frontmatter with name and description, followed by the skill's body (context, workflow, templates, etc.).
Optional supporting files (templates, examples) referenced from SKILL.md.

The plugin's skills/ directory is loaded on session start. The skill name in the frontmatter plus the plugin's namespace (standard-tooling) determines the invocation: a skill named pr-workflow in this plugin is invoked as /standard-tooling:pr-workflow.

Skills are documentation-as-config, not executable scripts. They tell Claude Code how to run a workflow; Claude Code executes the flow using whatever tools the user has granted.