Essential Custom Skills for Claude and Cursor

2 Sents

Adding custom skills to AI coding assistants makes them integrated development partners. Defining specific build and work commands allows you to verify code and maintain project health across multiple platforms without manually opening an IDE.

I rely on two specific custom commands in every project I set up with Claude and Cursor. These commands are /build and /work. They abstract away the friction of context switching and environment management.

The Build Skill

The goal of the /build command is to compile the project and display the interactive state without requiring an IDE. This approach allows me to check out a feature in an Android or iOS project without launching Android Studio or Xcode.

I can navigate to the directory and trigger the command directly. The process might take a few minutes. It completely removes the need to stop my current workflow and remember the specific build incantations for that particular project.

Here is the exact prompt I use to generate this skill:

Add a skill so I can type /build and then you'll just do what's needed to build to a simulator for me? The project should be able to build without me needing to open an IDE. The project should use whatever the most current OS and hardware I'm using is. Check the README for which platforms I'm building for and target the appropriate build configuration for the given target.

The Work Skill

The /work skill tells the AI agent to make the project function correctly. It begins by committing all current changes. It then performs whatever actions are necessary to make the project work.

This process involves resolving all errors and warnings before committing the final changes. My default platform is typically iOS. I have the agent start the verification process there. The agent then moves on to the other platforms supported by the project to ensure they all build successfully. The workflow involves attempting a build, reading the build log, and resolving any identified issues.

More robust methods exist to generate this type of automation. A prompt like this gives the AI enough leeway to adjust the skill to the project. This avoids forcing the project to fit the skill.

Here is the prompt for the /work command:

I'd like to have a command or skill I can call with /work that has one goal: make the app I'm currently working on to "work" on each platform. "Work" means:

The app builds on iOS
The app builds on iOS with no errors or warnings
All changes are committed
All unit tests pass
The app builds on all other platforms that the app targets.
All changes are committed.
Before trying to make this work, all changes should be committed.

These two skills keep the focus on writing code and solving problems rather than managing build configurations and IDEs. Setting them up requires minimal effort upfront and pays compounding dividends over the lifecycle of a project.