statement-of-purpose

Statement of Purpose Skill

An agent skill for writing, drafting, structuring, and revising Statements of Purpose (SOPs), personal statements, letters of intent, and MFA / creative-program personal statements for graduate-school, fellowship, and scholarship applications.

Works with any agent that supports the Agent Skills open standard — Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, OpenCode, GitHub Copilot, and others.

Built on peer-reviewed genre analysis of real, successful SOPs — not a template.

What it does

• Drafts full SOPs from scratch, rescues weak existing drafts, or reviews and gives feedback on a draft the applicant already wrote
• Adapts to program type: taught master's, MBA / business school, research/PhD, fellowship/scholarship, career change, MFA / creative programs
• Adapts to the applicant's English-fluency level
• Grounds every essay in the applicant's own truthful material
• Applies the rhetorical move framework found in admitted-applicant SOPs

Installation

Claude Code (plugin marketplace) — one command

/plugin marketplace add Haadhi76/SOP_Consultant
/plugin install statement-of-purpose@sop-consultant

Claude Code then loads the skill automatically. The skill name is statement-of-purpose.

Any other agent (Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, Copilot, …) — copy the skill folder

The skill itself lives in this repo at skills/statement-of-purpose/. Copy that one folder into your agent's skills directory (the folder name must stay statement-of-purpose):

Agent	Skills directory
Claude Code (manual)	~/.claude/skills/
Codex CLI	~/.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI / Antigravity	~/.gemini/antigravity/skills/
OpenCode	~/.config/opencode/skills/
VS Code / GitHub Copilot	.github/skills/ (project-level)

# Example — clone the repo, copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills dir
git clone https://github.com/Haadhi76/SOP_Consultant.git
cp -r SOP_Consultant/skills/statement-of-purpose ~/.claude/skills/

The copied statement-of-purpose/ folder contains SKILL.md and the full references/ folder — no further configuration is required.

Triggering the skill

Claude will load this skill automatically when you mention:

• Statement of Purpose / SOP / personal statement
• Grad-school application essay / admissions essay
• Motivation letter / letter of intent (treated identically)
• Research statement for a graduate application
• MBA or business-school application essay
• Fellowship statement / scholarship essay / grant personal statement
• MFA or creative-program personal statement
• Reviewing or giving feedback on any of the above

You can also trigger it explicitly: "Use the statement-of-purpose skill to help me write my SOP for [program]."

Directory structure

SOP_Consultant/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   ├── marketplace.json                   # Claude Code marketplace manifest
│   └── plugin.json                        # Claude Code plugin manifest
└── skills/
    └── statement-of-purpose/
        ├── SKILL.md                       # Main skill — workflow, hard rules, file routing
        └── references/
            ├── move-framework.md                  # Rhetorical move taxonomy + appeals (ethos/logos/pathos)
            ├── style-and-voice.md                 # Register, authenticity, anti-generic-AI guidance
            ├── revision-checklist.md              # Checklist for critiquing or polishing a draft
            ├── use-case-taught-masters.md         # Taught / coursework master's calibration
            ├── use-case-mba.md                    # MBA / business-school calibration
            ├── use-case-research-phd.md           # Research master's and doctoral calibration
            ├── use-case-career-change.md          # Career-pivot modifier (layered on top of degree case)
            ├── use-case-fellowship-scholarship.md # Fellowship and scholarship calibration
            ├── use-case-mfa.md                    # MFA and creative-program calibration
            ├── fluency-fluent-or-native.md        # Guidance for fluent / native-English writers
            ├── fluency-advanced-l2.md             # Guidance for advanced non-native writers
            └── fluency-developing-l2.md           # Guidance for writers still building academic English

How the reference files are used

SKILL.md is the entry point. The reference files are deltas — they are loaded on top of the core, not instead of it.