SKILL.md
Clipboard
Copy generated text content to the user's clipboard.
When to Use
Use this automatically after generating any content the user will paste into another app:
- Emails (cold outreach, follow-ups, replies)
- Social posts (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Threads)
- Messages (Slack, iMessage, WhatsApp)
- Bios, taglines, ad copy
- Any standalone text block the user asked you to write
Also use when the user explicitly asks to copy something.
How It Works
Write the content to a temp file and pipe it to pbcopy. This avoids heredoc indentation issues that cause unwanted leading spaces:
TMPFILE=$(mktemp) && cat > "$TMPFILE" << 'CLIPBOARD'
[content here -- start at column 0, no leading indentation]
CLIPBOARD
pbcopy < "$TMPFILE" && rm "$TMPFILE"
IMPORTANT: The heredoc content MUST start at column 0 (no indentation). The Bash tool may indent your command, but the text between the heredoc markers must not have leading whitespace. If the content itself contains single quotes or special characters, the <<'CLIPBOARD' quoting handles it.
Alternative for short content (under ~1000 chars): use printf '%s' piped to pbcopy. But for longer emails and multi-paragraph content, the temp file approach is more reliable.
Rules
- Strip markdown formatting before copying. The user is pasting into email clients, social platforms, or messaging apps -- not markdown renderers. Convert:
- bold to plain text (no asterisks) - [link text](url) to just the URL on its own line, or link text: url if context helps - Headers (##) to plain text - Bullet points (-) to bullet points (these are fine, most apps handle them)
- Don't include subject lines in the body. If the content is an email with a subject line, mention the subject line in your response text but don't include "Subject: ..." in the clipboard content. The user will type the subject into their email client's subject field separately.
- Confirm what was copied. After copying, tell the user briefly: "Copied to clipboard." If there are placeholders they need to fill in (like
[REPO LINK]), call those out.
- One clipboard operation per turn. If you generated multiple pieces of content (e.g., an email + a social post), copy the primary one and mention you can copy the other if needed.
Platform Detection
macOS: pbcopy (default -- this is Ben's setup) Linux: xclip -selection clipboard or xsel --clipboard WSL: clip.exe
Check uname if unsure, but default to pbcopy.
