Skill v1.0.0
currentAutomated scan100/100name: using-zorost-skills description: "How to pick, run, and amend Zorost agent skills. Use at the start of any task when this catalog is installed, or when a skill seems not to fit." version: 1.0.0 author: Zorost Intelligence license: MIT metadata: zorost: tags: [meta, skills, onboarding] related_skills: [spec-first-ai-feature, eval-first-development] program_weeks: [all]
Using Zorost Skills
1 · Purpose
Make the agent choose the right skill for the task at hand, run it to its verification gate, and report honestly when no skill fits.
2 · When to use
- At the start of any non-trivial AI engineering task when this catalog is installed.
- When the agent is improvising a workflow that a catalog skill already covers.
Do not use this meta-skill for trivial one-line questions or file lookups. Answer those directly.
3 · Inputs
- The user's request, verbatim.
- The catalog table in
reference/skills/agent-skills/README.md(names + descriptions).
4 · Procedure
- Restate the task in one sentence, starting with a verb: "Build…", "Fix…",
"Decide…", "Deploy…".
- Scan the catalog descriptions. Match on the task's stage, not its nouns:
deciding whether to fine-tune is fine-tune-readiness, not local-model-fit.
- If exactly one skill matches, load its full
SKILL.mdand follow its procedure. - If two skills match, run them in lifecycle order: Define before Build, Build
before Verify, Verify before Ship.
- If no skill matches, say so in one line, "No catalog skill covers X; proceeding
ad hoc", then proceed. Do not force a near-match.
- While running a skill, obey its STOP conditions. A stopped skill is a success
state with a report, not a failure to hide.
- After the skill exits, state which skill ran and what its Verify section produced.
- If the skill's steps proved wrong or stale, open an issue or amend the skill file.
A wrong skill that stays wrong teaches the next run to be wrong.
5 · Anti-rationalization
| Excuse | Answer | |
|---|---|---|
| "Loading the skill wastes tokens." | One SKILL.md body is cheaper than one wrong approach. | |
| "I already know how to do this." | The skill encodes the gates you skip when you improvise. Run it. | |
| "Two skills half-match; I'll blend them." | Run the earlier-stage skill first. Blending skips gates. | |
| "The task is small, skip the skill." | Small tasks are where bad habits form. If it matters, run the skill. If it does not, say so and answer directly. |
6 · Red flags
- The agent claims a skill was followed but cannot name its Verify evidence.
- The same skill is loaded three turns in a row without its procedure advancing.
- A skill's STOP fired and the run continued silently.
7 · Verify
- The chosen skill is named in the run log.
- Its Verify section's evidence exists (file, score, test output, or STOP report).
- If no skill matched, the one-line "no skill covers X" note exists.
8 · ZoroLogistics example
User: "Make the BoL extraction prompt better." The agent restates: "Improve a scored artifact." Stage = Build-on-measured-loop → prompt-suite-versioning. It loads that skill, which requires the golden set and scorer, which eval-first-development already produced. Sequence: eval-first (already done) → prompt-suite-versioning → error-analysis-50 on the failures.
© 2026 Zorost Intelligence LLC · zorost.com