Production-grade Claude Code skills for AI engineering — operational discipline, bounded execution, verification gates, multi-agent harness patterns.
A growing collection of production-ready Claude Code skills + reference documentation for engineers building complex AI systems. Each skill is self-contained, project-agnostic, and designed to make operational discipline mechanical rather than aspirational.
If you've ever shipped a complex multi-agent system as a solo or small-team engineer, you've probably hit some version of this:
- A "small fix" became a 3-day debugging session because nobody audited dependencies first.
- A canonical claim drifted from reality because nobody updated the live-state file.
- A funding application included a conflict-of-interest reference because nobody had a qualification framework.
- A production deploy ate the database because nobody documented the rule "never
docker compose down." - A session started cold because nobody captured the carry-over from yesterday.
These failures aren't moral failures. They're structural — the absence of external scaffolding that a real team would provide via review redundancy.
This repo packages the scaffolding. As Claude Code skills that load on narrow triggers, your AI agent and you share the same operational rules. As reference documentation that survives forks, the rules outlast any one project.
| Skill | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|
| complex-project-discipline | ✅ v1.0 | Universal operational discipline for solo or small-team execution on complex multi-layer projects. Truth hierarchy, bounded execution, verification gates, append-only logs, AI-agent harness, funding readiness, UX standards, anti-patterns. 28 files, ~5,300 lines. |
| (more coming) | 🚧 | Multi-agent design patterns, evaluation harness, deployment automation. |
These cut across every skill. Read once; refer back often.
Single canonical live-state file. Lower levels never override higher. No artifact →
UNVERIFIEDtag.
One task = one reason. One commit = one logical change. Audit before edit.
PARTIALis honest.UNVERIFIEDis required.SUCCESSrequires the full state-sync bundle to close.
Old entries never edited. New entries appended. The discipline forces honesty in retrospect.
5. 🛡️ Disclosure-first integrity beats hidden conflicts
Hidden conflict-of-interest is catastrophic. Disclosed conflict reads as integrity signal.
Document FAIL canonically. The cleanest empirical demonstration of where your method's boundary actually is.
Working branch for active work. Main protected via
permissions.deny. Unlock requires explicit user command.
# Clone into your Claude Code skills directory
cd ~/.claude/skills/ # or your project's .claude/skills/
git clone https://github.com/malishomen/ai-engineering-skills.gitThe skill auto-loads on narrow triggers (see each skill's SKILL.md frontmatter description). It does NOT auto-fire on every conversation.
Read skills/complex-project-discipline/README.md for the full skill overview, then drill into specific docs as needed.
Recommended first-pass reading order:
SKILL.md— entry + indexdocs/01_TRUTH_HIERARCHY_AND_STATE_FILES.mddocs/02_BOUNDED_EXECUTION.mddocs/05_APPEND_ONLY_LOGS.mddocs/15_ANTI_PATTERNS.md— 41 catalogued anti-patterns
Fork into your project. Adapt funder names, infra hostnames, branch conventions. Don't modify the canonical version — preserve the upstream so your fork's divergences are auditable.
SKILL.md Entry + index
docs/
01 Truth hierarchy and state files 9-level source-of-truth model
02 Bounded execution Task pack format + 10-step flow
03 Verification discipline "No artifact, no claim"
04 Branch and push discipline Main protection via mechanical denylist
05 Append-only logs Pipe-separated rows + ## sections
06 Change class classification R0 / R1 / R2 — when in doubt, classify higher
07 UX standards canonical 10 international standards distilled
08 Production infra discipline Deploy + DB volumes + tunnel
09 Corpus-driven development 7-step pattern + DoD thresholds
10 Funding readiness discipline Owner-operated + reference qualification
11 Communication patterns Apology + opt-in paths
12 Claude Code harness pattern 8-step layered rollout
13 Memory structure Repository + state + top-of-stack
14 Session close discipline Close gate + 6-condition final answer
15 Anti-patterns catalogue 41 named AP-NN with counter-patterns
16 Polish discipline Adversarial re-read
templates/
task_pack.md, bounded_packet.json,
agents_log_row.md, weekly_status_section.md,
reference_prep_brief.md, apology_email_pattern.md,
paste_ready_field_map.md, claude_settings.json
checklists/
pre_commit_check.md, pre_push_check.md,
session_close_check.md, final_answer_gate.md,
ux_per_surface_check.md, deploy_verification_check.md
Distilled from a 2026 production project running, in parallel:
- A research line with measured gates and preserved failures.
- A production web service with single-node Docker Compose + Cloudflare Tunnel ingress.
- A funding-readiness application cycle across the alignment-funder ecosystem.
- A layered Claude Code harness (settings.json + SessionStart hook + corpus runner + sub-agent).
All identifying information about the source project (organization names, partner relationships, specific gates, contact details, server addresses, SHA hashes) has been stripped from this canonical version. The patterns remain; the specifics do not.
PRs welcome for:
- ✅ Universal-pattern improvements distilled from your own project experience.
- ✅ New anti-patterns observed in real solo / small-team execution (see
docs/15_ANTI_PATTERNS.mdformat). - ✅ Per-funder profile updates in
docs/10_FUNDING_READINESS_DISCIPLINE.md(alignment-funder ecosystem evolves; per-funder notes age). - ✅ New skills in the
skills/directory, following the same structure (SKILL.md+docs/+templates/+checklists/).
PRs not welcome for:
- ❌ Adding project-specific identifiers (the canonical version is intentionally generic).
- ❌ Soft-pedalling the integrity discipline — preserved failures, append-only logs, disclosure-first rules are load-bearing.
- ❌ Adding dependencies on tooling beyond Claude Code, git, Docker.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
This collection complements but does not replace:
- Anthropic Claude Code documentation
- Claude Code skills system
- Boris Cherny's published guidance on Claude Code skills, hooks, and sub-agents
- WCAG 2.1 AA, ISO 9241-110, Nielsen heuristics, OWASP Top-10, GDPR, Lighthouse — referenced in
docs/07_UX_STANDARDS_CANONICAL.md
Skills planned for future inclusion (alphabetical, not prioritized):
claude-multi-agent-design— patterns for designing multi-agent assemblies with explicit capability envelopes.corpus-driven-evaluation— extending the corpus-driven pattern from dev to evaluation harness.deployment-automation— universal CI/CD patterns for solo founders.frontend-state-coverage— corpus-encoded coverage of state-conditional UI rendering.funding-application-craft— extending the paste-ready field map pattern to additional funder types.
If you'd like to author one, see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Stars help other engineers find this. If any pattern in here saved you a debugging session or a botched deploy, a star is the cheapest possible thank-you.
If you fork, tag me so I can see how others adapt the patterns.
MIT License — free to use, modify, redistribute. No attribution required, but if you cite this work somewhere I can see, I'll learn from how it gets used.
External structure for solo / small-team AI engineering. Truth hierarchy, bounded execution, append-only logs, verification discipline, disclosure-first integrity, preserved failures, mechanical main-branch protection. Make the agent and the operator share the same rules.