tool-design
This skill should be used for the tool-interface layer of an agent system specifically: writing tool descriptions agents can route on, designing tool schemas and response formats, naming conventions, actionable error recovery messages, MCP server design, tool-set consolidation, and deciding when to add or remove an individual tool. Use this when the unit of work is a single tool or a set of tools. Route project-shape, pipeline architecture, and task-model-fit decisions to project-development; route deciding whether to introduce sub-agents to multi-agent-patterns.
Install
With your agent
Install OMGSkills skill "muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering:skills/tool-design" into this agent's normal skills directory: call the OMGSkills MCP get_install_plan tool for your agent and run the script it returns (it installs only the pinned commit and verifies SKILL.md), and stop if MCP or the pin is unavailable. Do not overwrite or change existing skills without asking me.
Manual command
git clone https://github.com/muratcankoylan/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering /tmp/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering && ln -s /tmp/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering/skills/tool-design ~/.claude/skills/tool-designFrom README
Tool Design for Agents Design every tool as a contract between a deterministic system and a non-deterministic agent. Unlike human-facing APIs, agent-facing tools must make the contract unambiguous through the description alone: agents infer intent from descriptions and generate calls that must match expected formats. Every ambiguity becomes a potential failure mode that no amount of prompt engineering can fix. The unit of work for this skill is a single tool or a tool catalog. Project-shape, pipeline architecture, task-model-fit, and cost-at-the-project-level decisions belong to project-development. Deciding whether to introduce sub-agents belongs to multi-agent-patterns. This skill owns the interface layer that connects deterministic code to the agent. When to Activate Activate this skill when the unit of work is a tool: Writing a new tool description, schema, or response format. Debugging cases where the agent picked the wrong tool or generated malformed calls.
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