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Two Requests That Look Similar But Need Different Mechanisms
A technical-writing team working in a docs-only repository makes two requests:
- Request A: "Every response Claude gives in this repo — no matter what we ask — should be bullet points only, no prose paragraphs, and should never suggest code changes since this repo has no code."
- Request B: "When someone asks Claude to draft a new API reference page, it should pull the OpenAPI spec, follow our house style for parameter tables, and flag anything undocumented — but only when someone actually asks for a new page, not on every message."
- Which mechanism fits Request A, and specifically why would a skill
with a very broad
descriptionbe the wrong tool even if you tried hard to make it auto-trigger on everything? - Which mechanism fits Request B, and what frontmatter field keeps it from firing outside of an explicit ask?
- A team member proposes solving both with one skill that has no
disable-model-invocationand an extremely generic description like "helps with anything in this repo." Explain concretely what would go wrong.
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