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Task: Create a Skill

Source: R/task_create_skill.R
btw_task_create_skill.Rd

Create a new skill for your project using interactive guidance. If launched in app or console mode, this task will start an interactive chat session to guide you through the process of creating a skill that extends Claude's capabilities with specialized knowledge, workflows, or tool integrations.

Usage

btw_task_create_skill(
  ...,
  name = NULL,
  client = NULL,
  mode = c("app", "console", "client", "tool"),
  tools = "docs"
)

Arguments

...

Additional context to provide to the AI. This can be any text or R objects that can be converted to text using btw().

name

Optional skill name. If provided, the AI will skip the naming step and use this name directly.

client

An ellmer::Chat client, or a provider/model string to be passed to ellmer::chat() to create a chat client, or an alias to a client setting in your btw.md file (see "Multiple Providers" section). Defaults to ellmer::chat_anthropic(). You can use the btw.client option to set a default client for new btw_client() calls, or use a btw.md project file for default chat client settings, like provider and model. We check the client argument, then the btw.client R option, and finally the btw.md project file (falling back to user-level btw.md if needed), using only the client definition from the first of these that is available.

mode

The mode to run the task in, which affects what is returned from this function. "app" and "console" modes launch interactive sessions, while "client" and "tool" modes return objects for programmatic use.

tools

Optional list or character vector of tools to allow the task to use when creating the skill. By default documentation tools are included to allow the task to help create package-based skills. You can include additional tools as needed.

Because the task requires file tools to create skills with resources, tools for listing, reading and writing files are always included.

Value

When mode is "app" or "console", this function launches an interactive session in the browser or the R console, respectively. The ellmer chat object with the conversation history is returned invisibly when the session ends.

When mode is "client", this function returns the configured ellmer chat client object. When mode is "tool", this function returns an ellmer tool object that can be used in other chat instances.

See also

Other task and agent functions: btw_task(), btw_task_create_btw_md(), btw_task_create_readme()

Examples

withr::with_envvar(list(ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "example"), {
  btw_task_create_skill(mode = "tool", client = "anthropic")
})
#> Using model = "claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929".
#> # <ellmer::ToolDef> btw_task_create_skill(prompt, name)
#> # @name: btw_task_create_skill
#> # @description: Create a new skill for your project with interactive guidance.
#> # @convert: TRUE
#> #
#> function (prompt, name = NULL) 
#> btw_task_create_skill_tool(prompt, name)
#> <bytecode: 0x557c9f88d7e0>
#> <environment: 0x557c9f88df50>