Skills System

Skills are reusable workflows and custom commands that can be invoked by name or discovered automatically by the agent.

Creating Your Own Skills

1. Choose a location:
2. Personal skills (all projects): ~/.patchpal/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

3. Project-specific skills: <repo>/.patchpal/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

4. Create the skill file:

   # Create a personal skill
   mkdir -p ~/.patchpal/skills/my-skill
   cat > ~/.patchpal/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md <<'EOF'
   ---
   name: my-skill
   description: Brief description of what this skill does
   ---
   # Instructions
   Your detailed instructions here...
   EOF
   

5. Skill File Format:

   ---
   name: skill-name
   description: One-line description
   ---
   # Detailed Instructions
   - Step 1: Do this
   - Step 2: Do that
   - Use specific PatchPal tools like git_status, read_file, etc.
   

Example Skills

The PatchPal repository includes example skills you can use as templates: - commit: Best practices for creating git commits - review: Comprehensive code review checklist - add-tests: Add comprehensive pytest tests (includes code block templates) - slack-gif-creator: Create animated GIFs for Slack (from Anthropic's official skills repo, demonstrates Claude Code compatibility) - skill-creator: Guide for creating effective skills with bundled scripts and references (from Anthropic's official skills repo, demonstrates full bundled resources support)

After pip install patchpal, get examples:

# Quick way: Download examples directly from GitHub
curl -L https://github.com/wiseprobe/patchpal/archive/main.tar.gz | tar xz --strip=1 patchpal-main/examples

# Or clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/wiseprobe/patchpal.git
cd patchpal

# Copy examples to your personal skills directory
cp -r examples/skills/commit ~/.patchpal/skills/
cp -r examples/skills/review ~/.patchpal/skills/
cp -r examples/skills/skill-creator ~/.patchpal/skills/

View examples online: Browse the examples/skills/ directory on GitHub to see the skill format and create your own.

You can also try out the example skills at anthropic/skills.

Using Skills

There are two ways to invoke skills:

1. Direct invocation - Type /skillname at the prompt:

   $ patchpal
   You: /commit Fix authentication bug
   

2. Natural language - Just ask, and the agent discovers the right skill:

   You: Help me commit these changes following best practices
   # Agent automatically discovers and uses the commit skill
   

Finding Available Skills

Ask the agent to list them:

You: list skills

Skill Priority

Project skills (.patchpal/skills/) override personal skills (~/.patchpal/skills/) with the same name.