Agent skills
Agent skills
Eleven rd-* skills that teach Claude Code and Codex how to plan, file, build and ship work in Radial.
A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md in it. Your agent reads the description,
decides the skill applies, and follows the procedure inside. That is the whole
mechanism: no plugin, no runtime, no code executing on your machine that you
cannot read in a text editor.
The rd-* pack is eleven of them, covering the loop from "we should probably do
X" to an open pull request, plus four you run on their own to keep a backlog
honest. They are MIT and public:
read them, fork them, send a pull request.
Install in 60 seconds
radial skills installThat writes the pack into ~/.claude/skills and ~/.agents/skills. Restart
your agent, then type /rd-setup in Claude Code or $rd-setup in Codex.
Working in one repo rather than everywhere?
radial skills install --projectFull detail, including the other two installers and what to do when nothing shows up: Install and update.
The workflow, in order
The skills supply instructions for the agent. The pipeline definition names the stages and gates it records. Workflow design explains how instructions, executable checks, and human decisions fit together.
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
rd-setup | CLI, sign-in, team, .radial/config.json, the agent instructions, the pack |
rd-plan | An idea becomes one parent and two to four children with acceptance criteria |
rd-prototype | One clickable HTML file, attached to the issue with a Preview URL |
rd-issues | Files the tree, wires the blocked-by edges, reads every issue back |
rd-build | Works the tree child by child: in progress, build, gate, notes, in review |
rd-verify | Resolves and runs this repo's gate, then reads the summary line |
rd-pr | Branch, base sync, commit, pull request with sibling ids scrubbed |
They chain, but nothing forces you through all seven. /rd-plan on its own is
useful. So is /rd-verify.
As they run, they leave a build on the issue: the stages, each child's window, the gates with the evidence behind them, and the chat. You read it where you read the issue.
Hygiene, any time
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
rd-triage | Ranks open parents Now, Next, Later, Icebox from real signal |
rd-cleanup | Open children under done parents, closed or promoted on evidence |
rd-changelog | Completed issues become Feature, Improvement and Fix entries |
rd-retro | Scores one finished build against the workflow, with evidence |
Three things worth knowing before you start
The description is the interface
Your agent picks a skill by reading its description frontmatter and nothing
else. That is why each one names Radial, the issue tracker, and the client it
runs in, and why you invoke a skill by describing your situation rather than by
memorising its name.
They read and write through the radial CLI
Which means they respect your session, your scope and your team. A read-scoped
key stops /rd-issues at the first create with a clear message, rather than
half-filing a tree.
A tree ends in review, never done
/rd-build moves each child to in review and stops. Closing is a human
decision, and a workflow that closes its own work hides the moment someone
should look at it.
Change them without forking them
Every skill has named extension points. You write a small wrapper that adds your rules at those points and keep receiving updates to the skill itself:
radial skills extend rd-build --name team-buildSee Extending a skill.
Where the files live
| Path | What it is | Commit it? |
|---|---|---|
.radial/config.json | The team key for this repo | yes |
.radial/pipeline.json | The stages and gates used to record builds | yes |
.radial/skills/<name>/ | Your wrappers | yes |
.radial/changelog.md | What rd-changelog writes | yes |
.radial/plans/ | Plan bodies, scaffolding for rd-issues | no |
.radial/prototypes/ | Prototype HTML before it is attached | no |
radial skills update picks up new versions; radial skills list shows what
you have against what is published.