The AI skills I actually use

What a skill actually is

A skill is a saved set of instructions the AI loads before it does a certain kind of task. Not a personality, not a vibe. A written process: when to use it, the steps in order, and the specific rules I want followed.

I did not write these to make the AI smarter in general. I wrote them because I kept explaining the same thing project after project, and I got tired of repeating myself.

Figma and design-system work

• A component pattern for my Figma plugin. Base component first, then instances, then variants, then the component set, in that exact order, plus the sizing and naming rules from note 10.
• A prerequisite before any Figma script runs. The plugin API has enough sharp edges that I load a reference before every write, instead of trusting the AI to remember it.
• A spacing rule for layouts. Outer containers get proportionally more spacing than inner ones, in 8px and 4px steps, pulled from the file's own variables. The same logic every time, not a fresh guess per screen.

Motion and video

My launch-video workflow is a fixed order: brief and rules first, then real reference videos, then a text-only beat sheet, then one style-test shot before touching the rest, then the full draft, then one batched round of review, then render. I wrote it after a real launch film where jumping straight to visuals cost more rounds than it should have. Now the AI will not skip to visuals before the beat sheet is approved.

Feedback and review

Reading real user feedback for my own tools follows a fixed procedure too: search for only what has not been read yet, summarize it the same way every time, mark it read, log it, then bring it to me to discuss. It never re-reads processed mail and never improvises the format, on purpose. Consistency matters more than cleverness for something I read every week.

The point of writing it down

Mood and tone still get made by hand first. A skill only carries the system-side rules: naming, order, structure, the mistake I am not making twice. And a skill is only as good as my own process was when I wrote it. If my flow is not solid, writing it into a skill just repeats the same mistake faster. I still read the output before it goes anywhere near a client.