Awesome SDE Skills

Welcome to the Awesome SDE Skills Repo! This repository is a curated collection of essential software development skills and best practices designed for one primary purpose: rapid prototyping and efficient project kickstarts.

Quickstart

Installation

1. Copy the desired skill folder (e.g., $(pwd)/Architect) into $CODEX_HOME/skills/ (defaults to ~/.codex/skills/).
2. Restart Codex so it loads the new skill.
3. In your next session, invoke skill with $. For example $architect to concretize the plan.

What are SKILLs and how are they different from MCP tools?

Skills are specialized instruction sets that guides the LLM on how to accomplish SPECIFIC tasks. You can think of skills as a playbook with concrete inputs and outputs. Skills usually contains the follows:

1. Step-by-step workflows and procedures. More concrete the workflow and procedures are, the more likely this skill will yield good results
2. Code examples and templates. A good example workflow can significantly increase the possibility of success.
3. Standards, formatting guidelines, pitfalls
4. References and code snippets

MCPs are tools with which LLM interacts with external systems and services. They are actually callable functions, no matter whether they are real functions or another LLM call (prompt + response)

MCP tools extends the capability of LLM (what can be done) SKILLs extend the expertise of LLM (how to do a specific task)

Contents

• Relation among SKILLs
• Skills
  • Different Roles
  • Common Development Skills
• Creating Skills
• Contributing

Relation among SKILLs

flowchart LR
  A[Product Manager] --> B[Architect]
  B --> C[Developer Team]
  subgraph C[Developer Team]
    E[Frontend]
    F[Backend]
    G[DevOps]
    E ~~~ F
    F ~~~ G
  end
  C --> H[Testing]

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Skills:

Role-based:

• Product Manager: Turn user prompt into a high level PLAN.md
• Architect: Turn PLAN.md to concrete implementation ready DESIGN.md
• Frontend Developer: Take one frontend implementation task from DESIGN.md and record it in IMPL.md. Default platform is web and macOS.
• Backend Developer: Take one backend implementation task from DESIGN.md and record it in IMPL.md. Default Language is rust
• DevOps Developer: Take one DevOps implemenation task from DESIGN.md and record it in IMPL.md.

Common Development Skills:

• git-commit: Generate a well-formatted git commit
• pr-drafting: Generate a well-documented pull request with description
• pr-reviewing: Review a pull request with detailed feedback

Creating Skills

Skill Structure

Each skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter:

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md          # Required: Skill instructions and metadata
├── scripts/          # Optional: Helper scripts
├── templates/        # Optional: Document templates
└── resources/        # Optional: Reference files

Basic Skill Template

---
name: my-skill-name
description: A clear description of what this skill does and when to use it.
---

# My Skill Name

Detailed description of the skill's purpose and capabilities.

## When to Use This Skill

- Use case 1
- Use case 2
- Use case 3

## Instructions

[Detailed instructions for Claude on how to execute this skill]

## Examples

[Real-world examples showing the skill in action]

Contributing

PRs and feedbacks are welcome as together we can incorporate more real software engineering practice for the skills. When adding new skills, follow the skill template above, make sure the description clearly states when the skills should be triggered and test that metadata within context window limits.