Template and Workflow Skills

Consistency by construction

Many tasks are about producing the same kind of output reliably: release notes, incident reports, design docs, meeting summaries, API documentation, commit messages. A skill with a template (in templates/), a short style guide (in references/) and a worked example makes every output follow your format and tone. Workflow skills chain several steps with checkpoints: gather facts (with scripts), draft, check against rules, ask the user to approve, then finish. Useful ideas: ask for missing inputs once, up front; put approval gates before irreversible actions; end with a checklist of what was done; and offer an escape hatch ("if the repository has no tags, ask which commit to start from"). Keep creative freedom where it helps (wording) and strictness where it matters (structure, numbers, names).

A workflow with approval gates (illustrative)

Checkpoints before anything irreversible. Not run here.

## Workflow
1. **Gather** (no side effects): run `scripts/collect.py`; if inputs are missing, ask for them once.
2. **Draft**: fill `templates/incident-report.md` using only collected facts.
3. **Check**: confirm every number and timestamp appears in the collected data.
4. **Approval gate**: show the draft and ask "Publish to the wiki? (yes/no)". Stop if no.
5. **Publish**: run `scripts/publish.py --page <name>` (only after a clear yes).
6. **Report**: list what was done and the page URL.

Ask for missing inputs once

Gather all required inputs up front instead of interrupting repeatedly.

Quick check: Where should a workflow skill place an approval gate?

• Before irreversible or external actions such as publishing or deleting
• After everything is already done
• Never
• Only at the very first line