Generating skills

skillgendev generate is the main command. It turns one route, or every route in .skillgendev/routes.json, into a skill folder.

skillgendev generate --route /campaigns/new --name new-campaign    # one route
skillgendev generate --all --name myapp                  # every route

--route accepts a route pattern, a concrete page address, or the route's skill name.

Naming skills

You always choose the names.

Command	Name
--route /campaigns/new --name new-campaign	exactly new-campaign
--all --name acme	acme-<route-slug> for every route, such as acme-campaign-new
no --name	prefix from config.json app_name, else the repository folder name

Every name is checked against the Agent Skills rules: lowercase letters, digits and single hyphens, at most 64 characters, and identical to its folder. A name that does not pass is rejected with a clear message. You can also edit skill per route in routes.json; a name you chose is locked ("name_locked": true) and survives later routes --all runs. Clashing generated names get a numeric suffix (-2, -3).

Concrete pages and patterns

You can give a real page address instead of the pattern. With --route /campaigns/42/edit, skillgendev finds the code of /campaigns/[id]/edit and reads that. The pattern with the most fixed segments wins. If two patterns fit equally well, skillgendev guesses nothing and the analysis starts with no files; give the pattern route then.

What a run reports

Each route ends with one status:

Status	Meaning
written	The skill folder was written and passed every check
no-form	The page has no editable controls; it is listed in the index and skipped
invalid	A check failed; the previous skill and its page data were left untouched
failed	The route could not be processed
skipped	"skip": true in routes.json
exists	A skill is already there; nothing was done (see below)
needs	The run stopped at something the agent or you do next (exit code 3)

Routes marked as having no form are skipped on later runs; --force retries them.

Recreating a skill

A skill that already exists is never replaced by accident. Without --overwrite, generate stops before any analysis or probing and reports status exists, and /skillgendev asks you whether to recreate it.

skillgendev generate --route /campaigns/new --name new-campaign --overwrite

• Your notes between the skillgendev:user:start and skillgendev:user:end markers are kept.
• A recreated skill replaces the old one only when it passes every check. If a check fails, the old skill and its saved page data stay exactly as they were.
• If nothing was generated, routes.json is restored exactly, so a --name rename does not stick for a run that wrote nothing.

Analysis is reused

If the page's code has not changed since the last analysis, skillgendev reuses it instead of asking Claude again, so recreating a skill after answering questions is quick and costs no tokens.

The reuse key is a fingerprint of everything the analysis is given: the rendered prompt (route, skill, app context, any probe summary and Graphify's account of the page), the answer schema, and the bytes of every file in the page's slice. When any of those changes, the page is analysed again. To force a fresh analysis, delete .skillgendev/pages/<skill>/analysis.json. Recorded analyses (--analyzer replay) are never reused, so tests stay exact.

Other options

Flag	Effect
--xy	Also measure where each field sits on a dev copy. See Field positions
--url URL	The dev copy's address; implies --xy
--open STEP	With --route: what to click before the form shows. See Hidden forms
--code-only	Never open a browser (the default)
--description "…"	Use this description instead of the generated one
--include GLOB / --exclude GLOB	Keep or drop routes, such as 'campaigns/*'
--concurrency N	Routes analysed at once in batch mode (default from config: 2)
--analyzer, --replay-dir	Choose the analyzer; see Working in Claude Code
--no-graph	Skip the code graph and slice the entry files only

The full list, with every command, is in the CLI reference.

Size limits

A SKILL.md body must stay under 500 lines; about 5,000 tokens is the budget. When a page has many fields, skillgendev first moves optional fields into references/fields.md, four at a time, and says in SKILL.md when to read it. Going over the token budget is reported as a note, never a failure.