Yesterday a skill landed on r/PromptEngineering that fixes the part of AI Projects everyone skips. Instead of writing one big instruction blob, it designs the entire setup. u/Me_Luden shared it under the title “A skill to create AI project instruction and system“, and it already has 8 upvotes.
What’s new
Project Creator is a skill that builds the whole package for an AI Project. That means instructions, knowledge files, skills, and a memory plan, all checked against each other before you see them.
One honest detail up front: Claude can’t create or configure a Project by itself. So the skill outputs files and paste-ready text, and you install them by hand. Its whole job is to make those pieces correct, consistent, and small.
The twist
The skill spends most of its energy on what to leave out. Its first principle is “smallest setup that works.” Every extra file, skill, or rule is something you have to maintain, so a piece only gets added if its absence would cause a real failure.
There’s a placement table that decides where each thing lives:
- Instructions hold the role, priorities, hard rules, and session flow. They change rarely.
- Knowledge files hold static reference like rubrics, ladders, and protocols. You update them rarely.
- Skills hold one repeatable multi-step procedure each. They change when the procedure improves.
- Memory holds progress, level, and next step. It changes every session.
The decision rules are blunt. You only get skills if you have two or more distinct procedures with different triggers. One procedure belongs in the instructions. You only get a memory plan if something actually changes across sessions. If a knowledge file and memory disagree about your status, memory wins for state and the file wins for definitions. You decide that in advance, in writing.
The mini-workflow
- 🧭 Intake. Short and one question per message, five at most. It asks about your goal, who does what, what changes over time, repeatable procedures, and how things usually go wrong. Say “default” and it states two lines of assumptions and moves on.
- 🗂️ Architecture. It fills in the placement table for your specific Project and shows it to you before drafting anything.
- ✍️ Draft. Instructions come first, in your own house style, under about 900 words. Every hard rule carries its reason in a clause, since the model follows rules better when it knows why. Then only the knowledge files and skills the architecture actually calls for.
- ✅ Review pass. A checklist runs over the full draft. It hunts for contradictions, vague rules like “be encouraging” that can’t be checked, bloat, leftover placeholders, state fields that are written but never read, and missing fallbacks for the first session or unreadable memory.
- 🧪 Test prompts. You get four to try: a normal first session, a continue with existing state, a missing-state start, and one where you pressure the AI to lower a standard.
- Deliver. Everything lands in a tidy folder with setup steps, instructions, knowledge, skills, a memory plan, review results, and the test prompts.
The review pass also checks that claims match reality. The AI shouldn’t say it ran code it was told not to run, and no rule should tell it to flatter you or hide errors. The skill even refuses to add persona or “never disagree” rules, even if you ask. It offers a tone preference instead.
One commenter, u/Curious-Cry-1966, called the checklist “the real gem” and pointed out that most people skip the review pass and end up with rules that fight each other. They also liked how the placement table forces you to separate what changes from what doesn’t. I agree with both.
Pro tips
- The skill ships at 70% on purpose. Run the four test prompts on a real task, then revise from what fails.
- Keep the Project’s memory separate from your general memory if the state shouldn’t mix with other chats. The skill recommends this in the setup steps.
- Already have instructions? Paste them in and it skips straight to the review pass. It reports what works, the top three problems, the one fix to make now, and a rewrite of only the affected parts.
- If you want the generated skills polished, hand them to the skill-creator skill.
One caveat: the skill points to a references/house-style.md file that holds the author’s own instruction style. You’ll want to write your own version so the output sounds like you.
Call to action
Grab the skill from the Reddit thread, point it at the messiest Project you have, and let the review pass tell you which rules are fighting each other. Then tell me what it caught. ☠
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I know if my rules are fighting each other?
Paste every rule into one list and read them side by side. Look for any two that could push the AI in opposite directions, like ‘always ask one question at a time’ next to ‘finish the whole plan in one reply.’ Keep one rule per behavior and delete the rest. A shorter setup is easier for the AI to follow and easier for you to maintain.
Q: What is the fastest way to stop memory drift?
Split the setup into two parts. The instructions stay fixed, and a small progress file holds what changes, like your level, your queue, and recent decisions. Update only the progress file at the end of each session, so the instructions never get rewritten by accident.
Q: How do I test whether the Project holds up under pressure?
Write two or three messages that try to make the AI skip a step, such as ‘can we just skip this part?’ or ‘I already know this, move on.’ Run them in a fresh chat and see whether the process holds. If it gives in on the first try, tighten the rule that covers that step instead of adding a new one.
A skill to create AI project instruction and system
by u/Me_Luden in PromptEngineering