Your AI coding assistant will hallucinate an API that doesn't exist, break file B while fixing file A, weaken your tests until they pass, and silently drop fields during data conversion. Most AI "skills" are 50-line rule snippets that can't prevent any of this.
dev-skills are multi-phase execution systems — quality gates, error recovery, systematic mitigation of 8 known AI weaknesses — covering the entire software lifecycle from project scaffolding to store launch.
| Number | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 26 skills | One per real lifecycle moment — discover, build, improve, document, audit, ship |
| 110 engineering principles | Drawn from 24 authoritative sources (12-Factor, SOLID + GRASP, Clean Code, Pragmatic Programmer, Martin Fowler, Google SRE, DORA, OWASP) and encoded as gates — see references/software-best-practices.md |
| 8 AI failure modes | Hallucination, tunnel vision, scope creep, memory decay, confidence bias, skip tendency, redundancy blindness, injection risk — every skill carries explicit mitigations (W1-W9) |
| 0 runtime dependencies | Skills are markdown — they run inside your AI tool, not as services |
| 5 AI tools supported | Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Aider — same skill, every host |
| 2 namespaces, 1 root | ds/audit/ (gitignored, transient state) + ds/<skill>/ (committed operational tooling) — nothing else leaks to your repo root |
Quick start:
git clone https://github.com/sungurerdim/dev-skills.git /tmp/ds && cp -r /tmp/ds/ds-review ~/.claude/skills/ds-review && rm -rf /tmp/dsThen run/ds-reviewin Claude Code (or copy into your tool of choice — see Install).
- Every dependency is a future breaking change. Fewer deps = fewer risks, fewer breakages.
- Collect nothing you don't need. Privacy-by-design, data minimization.
- If a human is doing it repeatedly, it should be automated.
- Every decision minimizes YOUR legal exposure. Not the vendor's.
- One developer + AI should ship what a team of five ships.
Each row picks one skill for one moment. Pick by the question, not by the noun.
| When you don't know where to start | Use |
|---|---|
| Idea, scaffold, half-built, feature-complete-but-unlaunched, or dormant project | /ds-ship — classifies the stage, plans the skill sequence, delegates each phase, consolidates one report. The fastest path through the whole catalog. |
| Question | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Has someone else solved this? What does the literature say?" | /ds-research — searches, scores source reliability, cites file:line |
| "What do the best projects in this space look like? Where do we fall short?" | /ds-benchmark — synthesizes the ideal from 5–10 comparables, produces gap table |
| "How healthy is this codebase? What's the lowest-hanging fruit?" | /ds-blueprint — scores 9 dimensions, writes findings every other skill consumes |
| Question | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Empty repo. Get me to a real project from zero." | /ds-init — scaffold, CI, lint, tests from day one |
| "Design my API + database + auth, end-to-end." | /ds-backend — three-layer design, no inconsistent naming |
| "I need design tokens, component states, theming, a11y baseline." | /ds-frontend — design system audit + generation |
| "Audit my mobile app before submitting to a store." | /ds-mobile — 145+ rules, 13 domains, release-readiness scoring |
| "Build me a CV/portfolio site that gets past ATS." | /ds-cv — single-page HTML + GitHub Pages deploy |
| Question | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Run a deep code audit — security, hygiene, architecture, perf." | /ds-review — strategic + tactical scopes, file:line precision |
| "Strip dead code, single-caller helpers, premature abstractions." | /ds-simplify — approved deletion, one reversible commit per group |
| "Catch up on dependency upgrades safely." | /ds-deps — patch/minor automatic + major-with-migration approval |
| "Format, lint, type-check, security-gate — in the right order." | /ds-fix — five quality passes, no skipping |
| "Tests are missing or asserting nothing. Generate real ones." | /ds-test — patterns matched, mocks rejected, real bugs surfaced |
| "Optimize a measurable metric autonomously — 100 experiments overnight." | /ds-tune — git ratchet, only improvements survive |
| "Hard problem resists a single-pass fix." | /ds-solve — plan → try → backtrack → re-plan, with web research |
| Question | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Detect doc drift, fill gaps, verify claims against source, write ADRs." | /ds-docs — drift detection + generation + Architecture Decision Records |
| Question | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Am I privacy/regulatory compliant? GDPR, KVKK, CCPA, accessibility law?" | /ds-compliance — 80+ rules, file:line precision |
| "Design event taxonomy that's privacy-respecting and actually useful." | /ds-analytics — minimum-collection schema, PII scan |
| "I have a product but no positioning, no copy, no growth plan." | /ds-market — marketing strategy + draft copy |
| Question | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Group my diff into atomic, conventional commits." | /ds-commit — reads diff, groups logically, writes precise messages |
| "Write a PR description that reflects the net diff, not the journey." | /ds-pr — net-diff analysis, no commit-by-commit narrative |
| "Audit my CI/CD — broken steps, unsigned builds, dep audits." | /ds-devops — pipeline integrity, signing, caching |
| "First production deploy — container, TLS, health checks, runbook." | /ds-deploy — generates production-ready configs + monitoring |
| "App store / web release / library publish — what gates do I need?" | /ds-launch — store metadata, perf budgets, release prep |
| "Repo settings, CODEOWNERS, branch protection, OSS readiness." | /ds-repo — full repo metadata audit |
| Goal | Order |
|---|---|
| Resume any project | /ds-ship (lets it pick the order for you) |
| New project | ds-init → ds-blueprint → ds-test → ds-commit |
| Existing project hygiene | ds-blueprint → ds-review --tactical → ds-simplify → ds-fix → ds-test → ds-commit |
| Pre-launch | ds-devops → ds-deploy → ds-launch → ds-repo |
| Solo-dev daily loop | ds-fix → ds-test → ds-commit → ds-pr |
| Stuck on a hard bug | ds-solve |
| Public OSS release | ds-docs → ds-repo --oss-ready → ds-launch |
/ds-blueprint is the recommended first run on any unfamiliar codebase — it writes ds/audit/findings.md that every later skill reads to skip redundant scans.
Everything dev-skills produces lives under one top-level directory:
<repo-root>/
ds/
audit/ ← gitignored, transient (deleted on success)
findings.md ← shared findings across skills
report.md ← ds-ship consolidated report
report.html ← optional, ds-ship --html
<skill>.json ← per-skill state for resumable skills
<skill>/ ← committed, user-facing operational tooling
... ← scripts, configs, audit logs (only skills that need them — e.g. ds/tune/, ds/mobile/, ds/launch/, ds/cv/)
.gitignore ← contains the line `ds/audit/`
Add to .gitignore once: ds/audit/. Nothing leaks to repo root, no per-skill dotfiles, no append-only history files. See SKILL-SPEC §10.1 for the full contract.
Most AI "skills" are static 30–100 line rule snippets. dev-skills are orchestrated execution systems:
- Multi-phase workflows with explicit gates, mandatory-phase enforcement, error recovery
- 8 AI weaknesses systematically addressed — hallucination, scope creep, tunnel vision, confidence bias, memory decay, skip tendency, redundancy blindness, injection risk
- Finding Resolution Completeness (FRC) — every finding gets a disposition (fixed/skipped/failed), zero silent drops
- Inter-skill coordination via
ds/audit/findings.md+ blueprint profile — share analysis, avoid duplicate work - Token-efficient — 10K token budget per skill, references loaded on demand
- Tool-agnostic — works with any AI tool that accepts markdown instructions
Copy any skill folder to your AI tool's instructions directory:
git clone https://github.com/sungurerdim/dev-skills.git /tmp/dev-skills| Tool | Install |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | cp -r /tmp/dev-skills/<skill> ~/.claude/skills/<skill> |
| Cursor | Copy SKILL.md + references/ to .cursor/rules/ |
| GitHub Copilot | Append SKILL.md content to .github/copilot-instructions.md |
| Windsurf | Append SKILL.md content to .windsurfrules |
| Aider | Reference SKILL.md via --read flag |
rm -rf /tmp/dev-skillsInstall one skill, several, or all 26 — they are independent.
skill-name/
SKILL.md ← Instructions and execution flow (≤500 lines)
README.md ← What it does, how to use it (≤80 lines)
references/ ← Detailed rules, loaded on demand
Each skill is a multi-phase execution system. Phases have explicit entry conditions, quality gates, and error recovery. References are loaded on demand — total active skill overhead stays within 10K tokens.
All skills follow SKILL-SPEC.md — a universal specification for building tool-agnostic, token-efficient AI coding skills.
See also: AI Instruction Patterns — research-backed best practices for writing effective AI agent instructions.
Always-on behavioral guardrails that prevent mistakes between skill invocations — scope control, complexity limits, security gates. One file, any AI tool: dev-rules.
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT