Skills are the backbone of any AI or agentic workflow ... think of it as documentation for your agents (not just a prompt). In this post, I share the actual structured skill I run before every Substack draft, organized by information type and connected to a Markdown knowledge base that makes it work.
Last week I wrote about Slaying the Churnivore with AI Workflows, a visualization of a content plan I’m developing with Claude’s help for my Substack. What I didn’t get into is the layer underneath and thought today ... why not share the skill!
For the past few weeks, I’ve been importing, structuring, and labeling my entire online back-catalog of writing into a Markdown knowledge base connected directly to Claude through Cowork.
This is a knowledge base AI can actually read, navigate, and write back to, because every file in it is labeled the same way I’m about to describe.
That project is too big for one post. Stay tuned. But the skill I want to show you today is a small, working example of what that knowledge base makes possible:
It can read my guiding content plan directly, and update it when something changes.
It can review my whole back-catalog to help me think about domains, topics, and where the yearlong arc is going.
It can find other posts I’ve written and link them into new writing without me searching for them or even remembering they exist.
That last one just happened. While finalizing this post (with a structured skill), Claude linked back to A Skill Isn’t a Prompt. It’s Documentation. without me asking it to look for anything. I didn’t have to remember the exact title. I didn’t go find the URL. The knowledge base already had that information.
A skill is documentation, not a prompt
A skill is a short, saved set of instructions Claude reads before doing a specific job — the same way a process document orients a new hire instead of re-explaining the company from scratch every morning. While skills have some similar characteristics as a prompt, its quite a bit more than that.
The skill I run before every Cyborgs Writing session is called cyborgs-briefing. Its only job is to open my content plan, work out where I actually am, and hand me a short briefing before I start typing:
current territory,
how many posts are published,
what’s next,
what’s sitting half-drafted, and
what’s still waiting in the ideas inbox.
Then it asks me one question to help me get started. I don’t need to load a project or cut and past context, or even work with a prompt.
For an ADHD mind that gets overwhelmed by over-planning, this helps me move forward today.
Process and task aren’t the same thing
The skill below is organized by information type: concept, reference, principle, process, task.
These are the same labels I use across the whole knowledge base, on notes and skills alike. Most of those are self-explanatory. Two of them get confused constantly.
A process is an overview of the workflow, which provides context for the task. Without this, the tasks have less meaning.
A task is the specific instruction to run that procedure right now. Exact steps that the agent uses to accomplish the goal.
Collapsing the two makes it harder to revise and could also cause problems with the AI workflow.
➡️ Paid subscribers can see the structured prompt below ... but I’m also building a public, living version of every skill in this knowledge base, so the library updates as I revise instead of going stale.
For now, that library lives in a password-protected Obsidian vault. Paid subscribers can request access below.
Right now there’s 15 skills, but will be growing.
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