My AI Skill Conventions

By Joel Dare - Written August 15, 2026

I like to write new skills that help me work with AI more quickly. I use Claude Code but these should be adaptable to any coding harness such as Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI, opencode, or Pi.

TLDR:

Prefix personal skills with my. so they’re easy to find with autocomplete
Add auto to skills that should run unattended
Pair them with a check.sh so the AI only runs when it’s needed

My Dash Skill Naming

I name my own skills in the format my-example-skill. I call this “My Dash” naming.

Claude Code currently mixes built-in commands and personal skills together with slash commands. Prepending skills with /my- allows me to use auto-complete to search through my personal skills. It’s handy when I can’t remember if I called a skill succinct or concise.

I previously used “My Dot” naming (i.e. /my.example). Although dots usually work fine, they invite trouble because some tooling treats things after the dot as file extensions.

Automatic Skills

I also use the word “auto” to indicate that the skill should be automatic and requires no user feedback. A skill called /my-auto-priority might use a rubric to automatically estimate the priority of an issue, add a tag, set a field, and insert a comment.

Check Scripts

Finally, I use check scripts, especially for automatic skills, to verify that an AI is needed at all. These sit next to the skill in the scripts directory and are ignored by the coding agent. I can leverage them in automated processes, such as a cronjob, to verify that an AI call needs to be made. For example, I could make a call to GitHub to see if there are any new issues. If not, do nothing. If there are, run claude -p and invoke the my-auto-priority skill.