- Read the existing skill and its resources, or collect concrete requests for a new skill. - Separate actual workflow branches from synonyms for the same branch. - Done when: every branch has a concrete trigger, expected outcome, and persistence target.

Choose invocation.

- Model-discoverable: write a model-facing description; omit disable-model-invocation. - Manual-only: set disable-model-invocation: true; write a human-facing summary. - Direct tool command: add command-dispatch: tool, command-tool, and command-arg-mode only when the command bypasses the model. - Done when: frontmatter matches how the skill will actually be reached.

Structure the skill.

- Map shared ordered procedure to SKILL.md; end every step with a checkable completion criterion and finish with verification. - Keep routing conditions in description; start the body with execution. - Map branch-only detail to references/, deterministic helpers to scripts/, output resources to assets/, and optional UI metadata to agents/. - Done when: every planned resource has one purpose and a direct pointer from SKILL.md.

Draft and persist.

- Live workspace skill: use skill_workshop to create or revise a pending proposal; keep live files unchanged until apply. - Repository-owned skill source: use the repository's normal edit and review workflow. - Done when: the proposal or source diff implements every branch from step 1 and contains every resource from step 3.

Validate.

- Run python {baseDir}/scripts/quick_validate.py <skill-directory> and execute every touched helper's focused test. - Done when: frontmatter passes, resource pointers resolve, and every touched helper passes its focused test.

Frontmatter

Required: name, description.

OpenClaw also supports metadata, homepage, license, allowed-tools, user-invocable, disable-model-invocation, command-dispatch, command-tool, and command-arg-mode. Add optional fields only when they change runtime behavior or discovery.

npx skills add smithery/openclaw --skill skill-creator