Suno Songwriter

[!NOTE]
I don't use Suno for professional music production. I use Suno to create music for my own personal listening, and this skill was built for that kind of use.

Portable agent skill for creating Suno v6-ready vocal songs, instrumental tracks, vocal style prompts, excluded styles, Advanced slider suggestions, multilingual lyric adaptations, and broader AI music prompts.

This is an agent skill, not a Codex-only package. Any harness can use it if it can read SKILL.md, decide when the skill applies, and optionally load files from references/.

Documentation

Browseable docs live at regiellis.github.io/suno-songwriter-agent-skill: the output contract, workflow, every mode, Suno v6 controls, and the full reference index. The site is a single static page in docs/, served by GitHub Pages, no build step.

What It Covers

• Song planning matrices: story movement, hooks, energy, arrangement, and timing
• Suno v6 song packages for Simple or Advanced mode
• Lyrics, hooks, section structure, and singable rewrites
• Practical harmony and melody: chord motion, modes, motif development, vocal range, and chorus contrast
• Rhythm and arrangement: meter, subdivision, pocket, instrumental roles, and section transitions
• Songwriting craft: lyric angles, hook placement, section development, rhyme architecture, prosody, and revision diagnostics
• Five genre-writing families covering pop/roots/soul, rap/rock/heavy, electronic/experimental, regional/diasporic, and jazz/stage/screen directions
• Genre fusion through shared pulse, phrasing, harmony, form, and timbral roles, with conflict resolution and worked blends
• Instrumental prompts and arrangements for lofi, OST, game loops, ambience, and background music
• Style and Excluded Styles separation for vocal and Advanced modes
• Model choice across v6, v6-wild, and v6-mini, Weirdness and Style Influence starting ranges, Variety control for prompt comparisons, and Audio Influence when an upload exposes it
• Multilingual lyrics, translation, adaptation, dialect, script, and pronunciation notes
• Reference-lyrics transformation without copying the source too closely
• Songwriting frameworks including structure, Rule of 3, and 80/20 hook prioritization
• Individual audio samples and sound effects (Suno Sounds)
• Cover art and animated (looping-video) covers via Suno's Generate Cover Art / Animate tools (text-to-image, text-to-video, image-to-video)
• Reusable artist personas and cohesive album/EP planning
• Portable prompts for other AI music tools

How Agent Harnesses Should Use It

At minimum, a harness should:

1. Read the YAML frontmatter in SKILL.md.
2. Use name and description to decide when the skill should trigger.
3. Load the body of SKILL.md when triggered.
4. Follow the routing instructions in SKILL.md to load only relevant files from references/.
5. Return outputs in the skill's requested shape: vocal songs use Title, Style, Excluded Styles, and Lyrics; instrumentals use Title, Instrumental Prompt, and Arrangement; add notes, slider suggestions, language notes, and checks only when useful and supported by the mode.

The references/ directory is intentionally split for progressive disclosure. Do not load every reference for every request unless your harness has no selective loading mechanism.

Harness Metadata

Harness-specific metadata belongs in agents/.

• agents/openai.yaml - OpenAI harness metadata

Other harnesses can add their own files, for example:

agents/
  openai.yaml
  claude.yaml
  local-agent.json

Keep the portable behavior in SKILL.md and references/; keep product-specific configuration in agents/.

How The Skill Is Organized

SKILL.md holds the workflow, output contract, quality criteria, and routing table. The reference index lists focused guidance loaded only when needed.

Useful starting points:

• Song matrix: connect section purpose, hooks, energy, phrasing, arrangement, and bar/time budgets.
• Songwriting craft: lyric revision, stress, rhyme, concrete detail, and groove narrative.
• Output templates: vocal, instrumental, and multilingual skeletons.
• Suno controls: model choice, field mapping, official sources, sliders, Max Mode, and personalization.
• Production direction: community field notes on instrument activity, verse energy, production clauses, and ending buffers.
• Studio and iteration: take comparison, section repair, MIDI reference workflows, and stopping criteria.

The skill's instrumental labels are portable planning fields. In Suno's Advanced mode, the Instrumental toggle coexists with Styles and the rest of the Advanced controls; include available controls when requested. The roughly 200-character Style target is a compact default, not a platform limit. Prompt tags, BPM, key, and duration need checking against generated audio.

Typical Invocations

Vocal song:

Use $suno-songwriter to write a Suno v6-ready song about protecting a child from the world.
Genre: modern country.
Vocal: male.
Return title, style, excluded styles, lyrics, slider suggestions, and checks.

Instrumental:

Use $suno-songwriter to create a no-vocal OST cue for a snow-covered village before a boss fight.
Use orchestral strings, celesta, low brass, and taiko.
Return title, instrumental prompt, arrangement, and useful notes or checks.

Multilingual adaptation:

Use $suno-songwriter to adapt this chorus into Mexican Spanish for a singable Latin pop hook.
Keep the emotional meaning, not the exact wording.
Return language notes and pronunciation notes if needed.

Prompt controls:

Use $suno-songwriter to improve this Suno v6 prompt.
Suggest Style, Excluded Styles, Weirdness, and Style Influence.
The song should be polished dance pop but not EDM or hyperpop.

Installing in Claude Desktop and Codex Desktop

Use the Download Skill ZIP button on the documentation site for the bundled skill, or get a tagged version from the latest release. The zip contains the skill folder at its root, which is the layout both desktop apps expect.

Claude Desktop

1. Download suno-songwriter.zip from the docs or a tagged release.
2. In Claude Desktop, open Settings, then Capabilities, then Skills (Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, with code execution enabled).
3. Choose Upload skill and select the zip.
4. Toggle the skill on. Claude reads the name and description from SKILL.md and triggers it on songwriting requests.

Codex (desktop app and CLI)

Both read skills from the same directory. Unzip into it:

unzip suno-songwriter.zip -d ~/.codex/skills/

Codex matches your prompt against the skill description and loads it on demand. Invoke it explicitly with $suno-songwriter in a prompt.

Claude Code and other harnesses

Clone or unzip into the harness's skills directory:

# Claude Code
unzip suno-songwriter.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

# Generic agents directory
unzip suno-songwriter.zip -d ~/.agents/skills/

Installed copies are separate from this source checkout. When updating one, confirm its destination, copy the runtime files, and review stale references before removing them. Repository guidance and local writing tools are not part of the skill package.

Validation

Basic validation:

ruby -e 'require "yaml"; YAML.load_file("SKILL.md"); YAML.load_file("agents/openai.yaml"); puts "YAML OK"'

Check source and installed copies:

diff -rq SKILL.md ~/.agents/skills/suno-songwriter/SKILL.md
diff -rq references ~/.agents/skills/suno-songwriter/references

Manual smoke tests should cover:

• vocal lyric output
• instrumental arrangement output
• multilingual adaptation
• Suno controls and sliders
• reference-lyrics transformation
• style selection without repeating the same sonic palette

For the behavioral test set, use references/evals.md. Text checks do not verify generated audio; keep listening results separate.

Development Notes

• Keep SKILL.md concise and route deeper guidance to references/.
• Prefer adding new focused reference files over making one large reference file.
• Update references/templates.md whenever a new reference file is added.
• Update harness metadata under agents/ without putting harness-specific behavior in SKILL.md.
• Update an installed copy only when that is part of the task.