agent-development

Agent Development Skill

Design and build custom Claude Code agents with effective descriptions, tool access patterns, and self-documenting prompts.

Auto-Trigger Keywords

This skill should be automatically loaded when discussions involve:

• "create agent", "custom agent", "build agent"
• "agent description", "agent frontmatter"
• "Task tool", "subagent_type"
• "agent pipeline", "agent workflow"
• "agent memory", "memory limits", "heap size"
• "agent delegation", "auto-delegation"
• "agent not triggering", "agent not running"
• ".claude/agents/", "agents/*.md"
• "model selection", "Opus vs Sonnet vs Haiku"
• "declarative instructions", "agent prompts"
• "self-documenting", "agent documentation"
• "parallel agents", "batch agents"
• "sub-agent patterns", "agent design"

What This Skill Covers

1. Agent Description Patterns - Strong trigger phrases for auto-delegation
2. Tool Access - When to give Bash, allowlist patterns
3. Model Selection - Opus/Sonnet/Haiku decision matrix
4. Memory Management - NODE_OPTIONS fix, parallel limits
5. Sub-Agent vs API - Why Task sub-agents are superior
6. Declarative Design - What vs how in agent instructions
7. Self-Documentation - Encoding learnings into prompts
8. Pipeline Agents - Linking agents in workflows
9. Parallel Execution - Batch patterns, workflow design

Quick Start

Create a New Agent

---
name: my-agent
description: |
  [Role] specialist. MUST BE USED when [triggers].
  Use PROACTIVELY for [task category].
  Keywords: [trigger words]
tools: Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Bash
model: sonnet
---

# My Agent

## Your Role
[What this agent does]

## Process
[Steps to follow]

## Output
[Expected deliverables]

Fix Memory Issues

# Add to ~/.bashrc
export NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=16384"
source ~/.bashrc

Fix Bash Approval Spam

Remove Bash from tools list, or use allowlists in .claude/settings.json.

Related Skills

• cloudflare-dev - Development workflow (uses agents)
• project-planning - Project setup (creates agents)

Version History

• v1.0.0 (2025-01-18): Initial release with consolidated agent patterns