makerskills

AI agent skills for the personal operator's craft. Decisions, research, second-brain workflows, content rotation, scenario modeling, CFO cadence, domain hunts, and the meta-skills to author more.

Built for founders and indie operators. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other Agent Skills hosts.

Site: maker-skills.com

Install

# In Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add coreyhaines31/makerskills
/plugin install makerskills@makerskills

Or symlink for local dev:

git clone https://github.com/coreyhaines31/makerskills ~/code/makerskills
ln -s ~/code/makerskills ~/.claude/plugins/makerskills

See INSTALL.md for env vars, personal-config setup, and runtime dependencies.

Getting started — 5-minute path

New to the plugin? Do these in order. Everything else can wait until you need it.

1. Install the plugin (above), then set the base env var in ~/.zshenv:

export MAKERSKILLS_CONFIG="$HOME/.config/makerskills"

Reload your shell.

2. Run your first skill — start with decide. No config required:

/decide

It'll ask what decision you're facing, pick the right questions from the 37signals framework, and archive the result with a revisit date. That's the first-touch experience: any skill in this plugin. Structured input → structured output → written to disk.

3. Read one SKILL.md to see the pattern:

open ~/code/makerskills/skills/decide/SKILL.md

Each skill is a workflow doc — you can invoke via /decide OR read the SKILL.md and run the steps by hand. The plugin is documentation-first; the automation is a side effect.

4. Try one more skill that involves personal config, so you understand the pattern:

/paste twitter

It'll read your clipboard, strip formatting, warn if over 280 chars, and copy back the cleaned output. First invocation may prompt you to install pbcopy-adjacent deps if missing. No config file needed — this is a pure utility.

5. Now branch out. Skim The 18 skills below and pick one that maps to a workflow you're already doing manually. That's the highest-leverage adoption path.

Which skill do I invoke when?

Routing table for common operator jobs. Match your intent → skill.

Not sure between two? The skill's SKILL.md description always includes trigger phrases and disambiguation from adjacent skills.

The 18 skills

Meta — extend Claude Code (the -ify trifecta)

Decision & strategy

Knowledge & content consumption

Output & creative

Operations & utilities

Skills compose

Skills call each other by name. When a skill's job hits an adjacent job, it routes there rather than reimplementing. The most-referenced skills are the "central" ones — expect to touch these first as you adopt:

See each skill's ## Composes with section for the full dependency list.

Architecture

The repo is public + generic. Your personal data (Typefully workspace IDs, portfolio properties, voice overlays, archives) lives separately in ~/.config/makerskills/ (gitignored, on disk only).

Skills read from ${MAKERSKILLS_CONFIG:-$HOME/.config/makerskills}/<skill>/ paths. Set env vars in ~/.zshenv to point at your locations:

export MAKERSKILLS_CONFIG="$HOME/.config/makerskills"
export SECOND_BRAIN_VAULT="$HOME/Documents/SecondBrain"    # for second-brain (personal-scope vault)
export COMPANY_BRAIN_VAULT="$HOME/Documents/CompanyBrain"  # for company-brain (team-scope vault)
export COMPANY_CFO_ROOT="$HOME/code/company-cfo"           # for company-cfo (reports, projector, config)
export SLIDE_DECK_REPO="$HOME/code/your-site-repo"         # for slide-deck

Full setup in INSTALL.md. Full mental model in ARCHITECTURE.md.

Versioning

Two levels of semver:

• Plugin release tag (e.g. v0.5.0) — this repo's overall version. Bumped on each meaningful addition to the collection. See CHANGELOG.md.
• Per-skill metadata.version in each SKILL.md frontmatter — that skill's individual version. Evolves independently.

A plugin release at v0.5.0 may contain skills at 0.1.0, 0.1.1, 0.2.0, 0.3.1 simultaneously. That's expected — each skill has its own iteration cadence.

SKILL.md format

---
name: skill-name
description: When the user wants to [X]. Triggers on "[trigger phrase]"...
metadata:
  version: 0.1.0
---

The description is what Claude uses to decide when to load the skill — be specific about triggers and disambiguation from sibling skills.

Cross-referencing other skill packs

Skills can reference each other across plugins. In a SKILL.md description or body:

• Within this plugin: mention by name (see decide)
• Cross-plugin: prefix with the plugin (see marketingskills:cro)

Claude resolves references by description match at load time — no manifest linking needed.

Related skill packs

• marketingskills — 46 marketing skills (CRO, copywriting, SEO, ads, etc.)

Docs

• INSTALL.md — env vars, personal config setup, runtime dependencies
• EXAMPLES.md — one worked example per skill: what you say → what the skill produces
• ARCHITECTURE.md — mental model, families, personal-config pattern, sibling-repo ecosystem
• CHANGELOG.md — release history with per-version details
• CONTRIBUTING.md — how to add a skill, testing, PR conventions
• FAQ.md — common questions and gotchas
• BACKLOG.md — planned skills + brainstorm candidates

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Built by

Corey Haines — founder, Conversion Factory + Magister.