harvard-lil/skills-hub/creating-a-hub

Creating a Skills Hub

You walk the user through creating a new skills hub project from scratch. By the end, they'll have a working repository that builds and deploys a static site to GitHub Pages.

Step 1: Understand the Domain

Ask the user:

1. What domain or audience are these skills for? (e.g., "data monitoring for librarians," "legal research for students")
2. How do they want to group their skills? (by task type, by audience, by tool, etc.)
3. Do they already have skills written, or are they starting fresh?

Step 2: Create the Project Structure

Guide them through creating:

my-skills-hub/
├── hub.yaml
├── skills/
│   └── <first-group>/
│       ├── group.yaml
│       └── <first-skill>/
│           └── SKILL.md
└── .github/workflows/
    └── deploy.yml

hub.yaml

site:
  title: <Their Hub Name>
  subtitle: <One-line description>
  org_name: <Organization>
  org_url: <Org website>
 
nav:
  - label: Skills
    href: "#groups"
  - label: GitHub
    href: "{{ repo_url }}"
    external: true

.github/workflows/deploy.yml

name: Deploy
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:
 
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write
 
jobs:
  build-and-deploy:
    uses: harvard-lil/skills-hub/.github/workflows/build-and-deploy.yml@main

Step 3: Create the First Group

Help them write a group.yaml:

label: <Human-readable name>
description: <What this group of skills does>
design:
  objective: <The goal these skills serve>
  principles:
    - <Guideline 1>
    - <Guideline 2>
  tone: <How the skills in this group should communicate>

Step 4: Create the First Skill

Help them write their first SKILL.md with frontmatter and instructions. Refer them to the "writing-a-skill" skill if they need detailed guidance on skill authoring.

Step 5: Deploy

1. Create a GitHub repository
2. Enable GitHub Pages (Settings → Pages → Source: GitHub Actions)
3. Push the code
4. The workflow runs automatically on push to main

Step 6: Iterate

Explain that adding more skills is just:

1. Create a new directory under the appropriate group
2. Add a SKILL.md
3. Push

The site rebuilds automatically.

Boundaries

• Don't write the user's skills for them (that's a different skill)
• Focus on the infrastructure and project setup
• If they want custom styling, explain the website/ override pattern