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/guidance

Authoritative guidance for building Claude Code skills, agents, and plugins, plus init and update steps that install and refresh the plugin-building skills in the current repository. Use when you need the rules or best practices for a skill, agent, hook, or plugin — designing,

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han
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Install
$ npx -y skills add testdouble/han --skill guidance --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/guidance

Context preview

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

Authoritative guidance for building Claude Code skills, agents, and plugins, plus init and update steps that install and refresh the plugin-building skills in the current repository. Use when you need the rules or best practices for a skill, agent, hook, or plugin — designing,

SKILL.md

guidance.SKILL.md
name: guidance
description: >
  Authoritative guidance for building Claude Code skills, agents, and plugins, plus init and update steps that install
  and refresh the plugin-building skills in the current repository. Use when you need the rules or best practices for a
  skill, agent, hook, or plugin — designing, reviewing, hardening, or checking one against the guidance. Run with `init`
  to vendor the guidance, skill-builder, and agent-builder skills into the current repository (so they run with no
  dependency on this plugin) plus a path-scoped rule index, or `update` to refresh an already-vendored copy. Does not
  run an interview to build a new skill or agent from scratch — use skill-builder or agent-builder. Does not write
  feature code, review application code, or build non-plugin features.
allowed-tools: Read, Glob, Grep, Bash(find *), Bash(bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/han-config-dir.sh")

Project Context

  • personal config directory: !`bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/han-config-dir.sh" 2>/dev/null || echo "$HOME/.claude"`
  • project .han/config.md: !`cat .han/config.md 2>/dev/null || echo ""`

As your first action, use the Read tool on `.han/config.md` inside the `personal config directory` path above. A read that returns no file is no personal configuration: continue silently. When that file or the `project .han/config.md` probe supplies content, apply it per [config-rule.md](../../references/config-rule.md), which governs precedence between the two files, relative-path resolution, and what to do with a file that reads but cannot be used.

This skill has three modes. Pick the mode from how it was invoked, then follow only that mode's steps.

  • If the invocation argument is `init` or `initialize` (any case), run **Initialization Mode**.
  • If the invocation argument is `update` or `refresh` (any case), run **Update Mode**.
  • Otherwise, run **Guidance Mode**.

Guidance Mode

Serve the relevant guidance for what the user is building. Do not read every guidance document — that defeats the purpose. Find the one or two that apply, read them, and apply them.

The guidance documents live in this skill's own `references/` directory. Use this map to choose, then read only the specific file(s) you need:

  • Deciding whether something should be a skill, agent, or hook →

`${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/plugin-entity-taxonomy.md`.

  • Authoring or hardening a skill (descriptions, frontmatter, progressive disclosure, allowed-tools, scripts,

composition, testing, troubleshooting) → the files under `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/skill-building-guidance/`.

  • Authoring an agent (domain focus, self-containment, model selection, multi-agent economics, graceful degradation) →

the files under `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/agent-building-guidelines/`.

  • Plugin or marketplace configuration files (plugin.json, marketplace.json, monitors.json, themes.json) → the files

under `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/claude-marketplace-and-plugin-configuration/`.

  • Versioning, README structure, local development, the iterative development process, and

specialization-versus-model-tier reasoning → the top-level files in `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/`.

  • Writing the instructions for a target model (how Sonnet 5, Opus 5, and Fable 5 differ in following instructions, which

instructions to leave out, and how to calibrate length, narration, and scope) → `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/per-model-authoring.md`.

  • Copyable starter files → `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/templates/`.

Steps:

1. Identify what the user is building or asking about. 2. List the relevant subdirectory under `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/` to see the available documents, using the map above. 3. Read only the document(s) that directly apply. 4. Apply the guidance to the user's situation. Cite the document you used so the user can read it in full if they want.

Initialization Mode

Install the plugin-building skills into the current repository so anyone using the repo can run them and consult the guidance, with no dependency on this plugin remaining installed.

1. Run `${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/init-guidance.sh` from the repository root. The script vendors three skills into `.claude/skills/` under a `plugin-` prefix so they never collide with this plugin's own slash commands: a guidance-only `plugin-guidance` skill (whose `references/` directory is the single in-repo copy of the guidance documents), `plugin-skill-builder`, and `plugin-agent-builder` (with their names, cross-references, and guidance paths rewritten to that vendored copy). It then writes the path-scoped rule index at `.claude/rules/plugin-building-guidance.md`. Capture its output. 2. Report to the user what was written: the three vendored skills, the total file count, the rule index path, and the `paths:` globs. Explain that the three skills are now available directly in the repo (`/plugin-guidance`, `/plugin-skill-builder`, `/plugin-agent-builder`) and that the rule index is an index only — Claude Code loads it when a matching skill or agent file is touched, and it points to the vendored guidance so only the documents the current file needs are loaded, not all of them. 3. Do not commit. Leave the new files staged for the user to review.

Update Mode

Refresh the vendored skills and their rule index in a repository that already has them, so contributors get the current skills and guidance after this plugin has been updated. Updating is the same vendoring operation as Initialization Mode — it replaces every vendored skill in full (each `SKILL.md` and the guidance documents under `plugin-guidance/references/`, removing any files that the plugin source has since dropped) and regenerates the rule index — but it first confirms the skills are actually installed before touching anything.

1. Check whether the skills are already installed at the expected location. Run `find .claude -maxdepth 3 \( -path '*/skills/

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