Skills / AGENTS.md examples / Cursor rules / Claude Code rules

Use skills for task-specific book guidance.

Start with one mini skill for focused work. Use full as reference for deep sessions. Use nano only when context must stay tiny and always-on.

Version Choice

mini is the default for real agent work and usually the best skill body. full is best as skill reference, audit source, or focused-session material. nano is for very small always-on context.

Skills

Prefer skills when the guidance should activate for a specific task: refactoring, review, DDD modeling, reliability work, legacy code, or data-system changes. A skill can carry a mini file as its working instructions and link to full as deeper reference.

skills/
  refactoring-pass/
    SKILL.md   # based on refactoring.mini.md
    reference.md   # optional full version

Delivery Patterns

Pattern	Best for	Version
Skill or command	Refactoring, reviews, migrations, reliability work, DDD modeling, legacy changes.	`mini`, optionally backed by `full`
Always-on project rule	Stable defaults that should affect most tasks.	One `mini`, or `nano` if context is tight
Scoped rule	One directory, file type, or subsystem.	`mini` or `nano`
Retrieval / MCP	Large references, changing docs, external systems.	`full` or source material

Codex

Use skills for book-specific workflows. Use root AGENTS.md only for stable project-wide defaults.

project/
  AGENTS.md
  .agents/
    skills/
      refactoring-pass/
        SKILL.md

Portable baseline:

cp clean-code/clean-code.mini.md AGENTS.md

Claude Code

Use Claude Code skills for book-specific workflows. Keep CLAUDE.md small and import a common AGENTS.md only when the team wants the same base layer across tools.

project/
  AGENTS.md
  CLAUDE.md
  .claude/
    skills/
      legacy-change/
        SKILL.md

Import the shared root AGENTS.md baseline by adding this line to CLAUDE.md in order to reuse the same project-wide rules in Claude Code.

@AGENTS.md

Cursor

Cursor's strongest native mechanism is .cursor/rules. Use one small Always rule at most, and move specialized books into Agent Requested, Manual, or Auto Attached rules.

project/
  .cursor/
    rules/
      base.mdc      # one short Always rule
      refactor.mdc  # Manual
      ddd.mdc       # Agent Requested
      payments.mdc  # Auto Attached for payments/**

Decision Guide

Need	Use
Task-specific book bias	Create or invoke a skill from the relevant `mini` file.
Steady repo-wide bias	Use one `mini` rule set.
Extremely small always-on baseline	Use `nano`.
Deep audit or derivation	Use `full` as reference.
More than one book	Keep one primary always-on rule and move the rest to skills or on-demand rules.

GitHub Copilot

Use the Markdown content as custom instructions. Keep it short enough to preserve room for repository-specific conventions.