Contributing to Absolute

June 24, 2026 · View on GitHub

Thanks for your interest in contributing! Absolute is a collection of eleven separate skills — absolute-init (setup), a build loop (absolute-work, absolute-spec, absolute-ui, absolute-simplify, absolute-docs) and an engineering-health family (absolute-upgrade, absolute-audit, absolute-prune, absolute-debt, absolute-deflake). Each skill is independent.

Structure

skills/
  absolute-<name>/
    SKILL.md          # Required — frontmatter + full command flow
    README.md         # Required — skill landing page
    references/       # Optional — deep-dive guides loaded on demand

The five health skills (upgrade, audit, prune, debt, deflake) each carry a copy of references/health-engine.md — the shared loop. absolute-work carries the deep-dive guides (references/spec-writing.md etc.) that absolute-spec cross-references.

Editing a skill

  1. Edit skills/absolute-<name>/SKILL.md for flow changes.
  2. Deep-dive guides live in skills/absolute-<name>/references/ — add or edit there.
  3. Bump version in the skill's frontmatter (semver).
  4. Keep SKILL.md and README.md in sync.

Adding a new skill

  1. Create skills/absolute-<name>/SKILL.md with required frontmatter.
  2. Create skills/absolute-<name>/README.md.
  3. Add an entry to skills.yaml.

SKILL.md frontmatter requirements

  • Required fields: name, version, description, category, tags, platforms, license, maintainers, user-invocable, argument-hint
  • license: MIT
  • category: one of — engineering, operations, marketing, ai-ml, design, product, devtools, sales, data, infra, monitoring, cloud, writing, workflow, analytics, game-development, developer-tools, communication, video
  • All code examples must be syntactically valid

Updating health-engine.md

references/health-engine.md is copied into each of the five health skill directories. When you change it, update all five copies:

skills/absolute-upgrade/references/health-engine.md
skills/absolute-audit/references/health-engine.md
skills/absolute-prune/references/health-engine.md
skills/absolute-debt/references/health-engine.md
skills/absolute-deflake/references/health-engine.md

Pull request checklist

  • Changes live under skills/absolute-<name>/
  • SKILL.md frontmatter is complete and valid
  • README.md is updated if the skill's purpose or usage changed
  • license: MIT in frontmatter
  • If editing health-engine.md: all five health skill copies updated
  • skills.yaml updated if adding a new skill or changing version/description

Code of conduct

Be respectful, constructive, and focused on making skills useful. We follow the Contributor Covenant.