writing-for-agents

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: writing-for-agents
description: Writing documents for agents. Use when creating or editing skills, or modifying AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md.
---

Reference for writing any document an agent consumes: a skill, an `AGENTS.md` / `CLAUDE.md`, a doc reached by a pointer. The packaging differs; the writing does not: the same levers make each one predictable, since the agent takes the same _process_ every run rather than producing the same output.

When the document you're writing is a skill, read [`SKILL-MECHANICS.md`](SKILL-MECHANICS.md) for frontmatter, invocation choice, and router skills.

## Context pointers

A **context pointer** is a reference held in the agent's context that names some out-of-context material and encodes the condition for reaching it. A skill's description is one; a line in `AGENTS.md` naming a doc is the same object. The pointer's _wording_, not its target, decides when the agent reaches the material, and how reliably. A must-have target behind a weakly worded pointer is a variance bug: sharpen the wording first, and inline the material only if sharpening fails.

A pointer does two jobs: state what the material is, and list the **branches** that should trigger reaching it (a branch is a distinct case the document handles, so different runs take different paths through it). Every word of an always-loaded pointer costs on every turn, so it earns even harder pruning than the body:

- **Front-load the leading word**: the pointer is where it does its triggering work.
- **One trigger per branch.** Synonyms that rename a single branch are one branch written twice; collapse them and keep only genuinely distinct branches.
- **Cut identity the body already carries.**

## The two loads

Every document and pointer you add spends one of two budgets:

- **Context load** is the cost of always-loaded material on the agent's window: an `AGENTS.md` line, a skill description, anything sitting in context every turn, spending tokens and attention whether or not it fires.
- **Cognitive load** is the cost on the human: which documents exist and when to reach for each. The human is the index. Not a cost to minimise: it is the price of human agency; spend it where human judgement matters, remove it where it does not.

Material reached only through a pointer escapes context load at the price of the pointer's own line; material with no pointer at all rides entirely on cognitive load.

## Information hierarchy

A document is built from two content types: **steps** (the ordered actions the agent performs) and **reference** (definitions, rules, facts consulted on demand). The two mix freely: all steps (a recipe), all reference (a review's rules, this skill), or both. The core decision is where each piece sits on the **information hierarchy**, a ladder ranked by how immediately the agent needs the material:

1. **In-file step** is the primary tier: what the agent does, in order.
2. **In-file reference** is consulted on demand. Often a legitimately flat peer-set (every rule of a review on one rung), which is a fine arrangement, not a smell.
3. **Disclosed reference** is pushed out into a separate file, reached by a context pointer, loaded only when the pointer fires. Spans a sibling file in the same folder through fully external reference that lives anywhere and any document can point at.

Push too little down and the top bloats; push too much and you hide material the agent actually needs. That tension is the whole decision.

**Progressive disclosure** is the move down the ladder (out of the main file and behind a pointer) so the top stays legible. Not primarily a token optimisation: it is how the hierarchy is protected. Branching is the cleanest disclosure test: inline what every branch needs, and push behind a pointer what only some branches reach. When a document has steps, in-file reference that should be disclosed buries them and turns attending to them into a coin-flip: a variance lever, not just a legibility one.

**Co-locati