cross-harness-skill-authoring

Cross-Harness Skill Authoring

Use this skill when a skill should travel between agent harnesses without depending on one runtime's private assumptions.

Workflow

1. Treat SKILL.md as the canonical portable behavior.
2. Keep the skill directory name stable, lowercase, and kebab-case.
3. Put harness-specific launch, install, validation, or tool notes in separate sections instead of mixing them into the core workflow.
4. Use paths relative to the plugin or skill directory. Installed plugins are commonly copied into cache directories, so references outside the plugin may break after installation.
5. Prefer instructions that describe intent, inputs, outputs, and verification over instructions tied to one chat UI or model provider.
6. When a harness requires metadata, add only the fields that harness accepts and keep the meaning aligned with the canonical skill.

Compatibility Checklist

• The skill lives at skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md.
• Frontmatter includes a concise description.
• Optional frontmatter fields are additive and do not change the skill's meaning for another harness.
• External assets, scripts, and references live inside the plugin directory.
• Codex metadata points skills at ./skills/ in .codex-plugin/plugin.json.
• Claude Code metadata points skills at ./skills/ in .claude-plugin/plugin.json.
• Marketplace entries point at the plugin directory with a relative ./plugins/<plugin-name> source.

Validation

For Codex packaging, run the Codex plugin validator against the plugin directory.

For Claude Code packaging, run claude plugin validate . at the marketplace root and against the plugin directory when the Claude CLI is available.