How I Architected 84 Custom Skills for Claude Code to Automate My Daily Engineering

Description and use

A modular skill architecture for Claude Code reduced token bloat and hallucinations, enabling reliable automation of daily engineering tasks.

Problem

Monolithic system prompts in Claude Code caused context window degradation, token bloat, and hallucinations, making daily engineering tasks unreliable.

Outcome

Reduced token usage, eliminated hallucinations, and improved reliability of daily engineering tasks by loading only necessary domain knowledge.

Workflow

• Identify recurring constraints and domain rules.
• Create a skill file for each domain (e.g., unit testing, REST endpoint design).
• Add YAML frontmatter with name, trigger keywords, and description.
• Write a markdown instruction body with deterministic workflows, safety guardrails, and validation protocols.
• Store skill files in ~/.claude/skills/.
• Configure Claude to index skills and inject only the relevant one when a domain is detected.
• Test by running daily engineering tasks and verify constraints are enforced without hallucinations.

Evidence

Instead of loading all domain rules at once, we partition our engineering knowledge into isolated, self-contained Domain Skills stored in ~/.claude/skills/

Source

Each skill contains: YAML Frontmatter and Markdown Instruction Body

Source