engineering-skills/README.md

# Claude Skills — Mechanical Design Engineer

A collection of **custom skills for Claude.ai** that transform the assistant into an expert mechanical design engineer with 20+ years of experience.

## Repository structure

```
skills-claude/
├── README.md
├── compress-skills.sh          # Script to generate .zip packages
└── <skill-name>/
    ├── SKILL.md                # Main instructions (YAML frontmatter + markdown)
    ├── reference/              # Technical reference documentation
    │   └── *.md
    └── scripts/                # Executable helper scripts
        └── *.py / *.sh
```

## Prerequisites

- `unzip` — required by `decompress-skills.sh` to extract `.skill` archives
  ```bash
  sudo apt install unzip   # Debian/Ubuntu/WSL
  brew install unzip       # macOS
  ```
- Python 3 + `PyYAML` — required by skill scripts
  ```bash
  pip install -r requirements.txt
  ```

## How to install skills on Claude.ai

### 1. Generate .zip files

```bash
chmod +x compress-skills.sh
./compress-skills.sh
```

The `.zip` files are created in the `dist/` folder.

### 2. Upload to Claude.ai

1. Go to [claude.ai](https://claude.ai) → **Settings**
2. Section **Features** → **Skills**
3. Click **Upload skill** and upload each `.zip` file from `dist/`
4. Repeat for every skill

### 3. Use the skills

Invoke skills with a slash command in chat:

```
/<skill-name> [problem description]
```

## Skill format (Anthropic spec)

The `SKILL.md` file contains:
- **YAML frontmatter** with `name`, `description`, `user-invocable`
- **Markdown instructions** that define Claude's behaviour

```yaml
---
name: skill-name
description: What this skill does and when to invoke it
user-invocable: true
argument-hint: [optional argument]
---

# Skill Title

[Detailed instructions in markdown]
```

## References

- [ANTHROPIC-SKILLS-DOCS.md](ANTHROPIC-SKILLS-DOCS.md) — full reference extracted from official docs (structure, frontmatter, best practices, API)
- [Anthropic Skills Documentation](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/skills)
- [Agent Skills API](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agents-and-tools/agent-skills/overview)
- [Skill Authoring Best Practices](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agents-and-tools/agent-skills/best-practices)