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/workflow-skill-designer

Meta-skill for designing orchestrator+phases structured workflow skills. Creates SKILL.md coordinator with progressive phase loading, TodoWrite patterns, and data flow. Triggers on "design workflow skill", "create workflow skill", "workflow skill designer".

From plugin
maestro-flow
51124 skills25 agents29 commands3 MCP
Install
$ npx -y skills add catlog22/maestro-flow --skill workflow-skill-designer --agent claude-code

How it fires

How this skill gets triggered: by you, by Claude, or both.

  • Fires itselfAuto-invocation. Claude auto-loads it when your prompt matches the work.Auto-invocation is when the right skill fires by itself at the right moment, driven by a FLOW.md router and a hook, instead of you invoking it by name. It is the difference between a skill being installed and a skill actually getting used.Read the full definition →
  • You can call itInvoke it directly when you want it.
  • Slash command/workflow-skill-designer

Context preview

The summary Claude sees to decide when to auto-load this skill.

Meta-skill for designing orchestrator+phases structured workflow skills. Creates SKILL.md coordinator with progressive phase loading, TodoWrite patterns, and data flow. Triggers on "design workflow skill", "create workflow skill", "workflow skill designer".

SKILL.md

workflow-skill-designer.SKILL.md
name: workflow-skill-designer
disable-model-invocation: true
description: Meta-skill for designing orchestrator+phases structured workflow skills. Creates SKILL.md coordinator with progressive phase loading, TodoWrite patterns, and data flow. Triggers on "design workflow skill", "create workflow skill", "workflow skill designer".
allowed-tools: Agent, AskUserQuestion, TodoWrite, Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Glob, Grep
session-mode: none

Workflow Skill Designer

Meta-skill for creating structured workflow skills following the orchestrator + phases pattern. Generates complete skill packages with SKILL.md as coordinator and phases/ folder for execution details.

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Workflow Skill Designer                                         │
│  → Analyze requirements → Design orchestrator → Generate phases  │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                │
    ┌───────────┼───────────┬───────────┐
    ↓           ↓           ↓           ↓
┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐
│ Phase 1 │ │ Phase 2 │ │ Phase 3 │ │ Phase 4 │
│ Require │ │  Orch   │ │ Phases  │ │ Valid   │
│ Analysis│ │ Design  │ │ Design  │ │ & Integ │
└─────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘
     ↓           ↓           ↓           ↓
  workflow    SKILL.md    phases/     Complete
  config     generated   0N-*.md     skill pkg

Target Output Structure

The skill this meta-skill produces follows this structure:

.claude/skills/{skill-name}/
├── SKILL.md                    # Orchestrator: coordination, data flow, TodoWrite
├── phases/
│   ├── 01-{phase-name}.md      # Phase execution detail (full content)
│   ├── 02-{phase-name}.md
│   ├── ...
│   └── 0N-{phase-name}.md
├── specs/                      # [Optional] Domain specifications
└── templates/                  # [Optional] Reusable templates

Core Design Patterns

Patterns extracted from successful workflow skill implementations (workflow-plan, project-analyze, etc.):

Pattern 1: Orchestrator + Progressive Loading

**SKILL.md** = Pure coordinator. Contains:

  • Architecture diagram (ASCII)
  • Execution flow with `Ref: phases/0N-xxx.md` markers
  • Phase Reference Documents table (read on-demand)
  • Data flow between phases
  • Core rules and error handling

**Phase files** = Full execution detail. Contains:

  • Complete agent prompts, bash commands, code implementations
  • Validation checklists, error handling
  • Input/Output specification
  • Next Phase link

**Key Rule**: SKILL.md references phase docs via `Ref:` markers. Phase docs are read **only when that phase executes**, not all at once.

Pattern 2: TodoWrite Attachment/Collapse

Phase starts:
  → Sub-tasks ATTACHED to TodoWrite (in_progress + pending)
  → Orchestrator executes sub-tasks sequentially

Phase ends:
  → Sub-tasks COLLAPSED back to high-level summary (completed)
  → Next phase begins

Pattern 3: Inter-Phase Data Flow

Phase N output → stored in memory/variable → Phase N+1 input
                  └─ or written to session file for persistence

Each phase receives outputs from prior phases via:

  • In-memory variables (sessionId, contextPath, etc.)
  • Session directory files (.workflow/active/{sessionId}/...)
  • Planning notes (accumulated constraints document)

Pattern 4: Conditional Phase Execution

Phase N output contains condition flag
  ├─ condition met → Execute Phase N+1
  └─ condition not met → Skip to Phase N+2

Pattern 5: Input Structuring

User input (free text) → Structured format before Phase 1:

GOAL: [objective]
SCOPE: [boundaries]
CONTEXT: [background/constraints]

Pattern 6: Interactive Preference Collection (SKILL.md Responsibility)

Workflow preferences (auto mode, force explore, etc.) MUST be collected via AskUserQuestion in SKILL.md **before** dispatching to phases. Phases reference these as `workflowPreferences.{key}` context variables.

**Anti-Pattern**: Command-line flags (`--yes`, `-e`, `--explore`) parsed within phase files via `$ARGUMENTS.includes(...)`.

// CORRECT: In SKILL.md (before phase dispatch)
const prefResponse = AskUserQuestion({
  questions: [
    { question: "是否跳过确认?", header: "Auto Mode", options: [
      { label: "Interactive (Recommended)", description: "交互模式" },
      { label: "Auto", description: "跳过所有确认" }
    ]}
  ]
})
workflowPreferences = { autoYes: prefResponse.autoMode === 'Auto' }

// CORRECT: In phase files (reference only)
const autoYes = workflowPreferences.autoYes

// WRONG: In phase files (flag parsing)
const autoYes = $ARGUMENTS.includes('--yes') || $ARGUMENTS.includes('-y')

Pattern 7: Direct Phase Handoff

When one phase needs to invoke another phase within the same skill, read and execute the phase document directly. Do NOT use Skill() routing back through SKILL.md.

// CORRECT: Direct handoff (executionContext already set)
Read("phases/02-lite-execute.md")
// Execute with executionContext (Mode 1)

// WRONG: Skill routing (unnecessary round-trip)
Skill(skill="workflow-lite-plan", args="--in-memory")

Pattern 8: Phase File Hygiene

Phase files are internal execution documents. They MUST NOT contain:

| Prohibited | Reason | Correct Location | |------------|--------|------------------| | Flag parsing (`$ARGUMENTS.includes(...)`) | Preferences collected in SKILL.md | SKILL.md via AskUserQuestion | | Invocation syntax (`/skill-name "..."`) | Not user-facing docs | Removed or SKILL.md only | | Conversion provenance (`Source: Converted from...`) | Implementation detail | Removed | | Skill routing for inter-phase (`Skill(skill="...")`) | Use direct phase read | Direct `Read("phases/...")` |

Pattern 9: Compact Recovery (Phase Persistence)

Multi-phase workflows span long conversations. Context compression (compact) will naturally summarize earlier phase documents. The strategy uses **双重保险**: TodoWrite 跟踪

Read more
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