Hone Skills

April 18, 2026 · View on GitHub

Sharpen the things that dull.

8 AI skills that enforce timeless software engineering practices — the kind that outlast every framework, language, and tool. Derived from 25 proven practices that emphasize code clarity, disciplined process, and proactive maintenance.

These skills are designed to run on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, or per-PR), turning your AI coding assistant into a persistent quality guardian.

Install

npx skills add ckorhonen/hone-skills

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, and any agent that supports the Agent Skills standard.

Skills

Skill	What it does	Schedule
`hone:method-brevity-audit`	Finds methods that have grown too long	Weekly
`hone:intent-clarity-audit`	Spots code that hides its intent	Weekly
`hone:test-naming-audit`	Checks test names read as sentences	Every PR
`hone:duplication-hunt`	Finds duplicated patterns worth extracting	Weekly
`hone:magic-number-hunt`	Surfaces magic numbers and unexplained literals	Weekly
`hone:naming-specificity-audit`	Flags vague names like Manager, Handler, Utils	Weekly
`hone:broken-windows-hunt`	Detects entropy: TODOs, dead code, lint ignores	Daily
`hone:automation-opportunities`	Finds manual processes ripe for automation	Monthly

Philosophy

"Practices change much slower than tools and are typically a better investment."

These skills codify engineering judgment that has survived decades of framework churn. Each one runs a bounded, evidence-led audit against your actual codebase — no generic advice, only concrete findings with file paths and line numbers.

Hone is what runs in the background. It's quiet guardianship rather than expert advice — noticing what a careful practitioner would have noticed if they had the time, on a cadence you choose.

Published alongside this pack at cdd.dev/skills:

ckorhonen/swe-skills — 15 swe: skills for on-demand engineering work: PR risk review, repo introspection, audits, incident follow-up, ownership maps. Invoked in conversation when you need them.
ckorhonen/claude-skills — the broad, unopinionated collection across many domains (design, marketing, AI, security, web3). A good place to browse when you're not sure what you want yet.

Development

bun install
bun run evals:check    # validate all skills + eval suites
bun run lint:md        # check markdown
bun run lint:md:fix    # auto-fix markdown

Structure

skills/<slug>/SKILL.md       — skill definition
evals/<slug>/README.md       — what the eval covers
evals/<slug>/rubric.md       — pass/fail conditions
evals/<slug>/cases.json      — test scenarios
evals/shared/criteria.json   — shared review criteria
scripts/validate-evals.mjs   — structural validation
site/                        — landing page source

License

MIT