Creativity Skill

An Agent Skill that turns six research-backed creativity principles into a working method for social media content — across Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and LinkedIn.

It brackets a creative task at both ends: a preflight brief to shape the work before it exists, and a 0–3 rubric with two hard gates to score the draft before it ships. In between, each principle can be called on its own to brainstorm against a single lens or to check that one dimension.

The mandate, in one line. Make something new and valuable that makes the audience feel something, executed with craft, clear at a glance, and rewarding on a second look.

The six principles

#	Principle	In one line
1	Originality	Start from the uncommon. Refuse the obvious approaches.
2	Expressiveness	Build in a feeling, not just an idea. Choose one emotion and push for it.
3	Aesthetic Appeal	Tune to the middle of the curve — interesting and comfortable, never dull or chaotic.
4	Technical Execution	Earn the right to be seen as creative. Clean spec, zero errors. Hard gate.
5	Unexpected Associations	Engineer one deliberate, meaningful surprise.
6	Interpretability & Depth	Clear in three seconds, rewarding on the second look. Glance test is a hard gate.

The principles draw on established theory — Boden, Guilford, Amabile, Ramachandran, Berlyne, Martindale, and the Geneplore model. See references/theoretical-foundations.md for the research and citations behind each one.

The two hard gates

A draft cannot ship with either gate open, whatever the total score.

• Technical Execution must score at least 2. Creativity is novelty plus value; errors forfeit the value. A typo or a wrong export blocks publish.
• Interpretability must pass the 3-second glance test. If the main point is not graspable at a glance, depth is irrelevant. Too obscure is a fail, not a low score.

How it works

Use the skill in two passes, calling individual principles in between.

1. Before you create — brief and brainstorm. Read references/preflight-brief.md and answer its eight pre-production prompts. To push hard on one dimension, open that principle's file and use its Use for ideation section.
2. While you create — hold the tensions. The principles pull against each other on purpose: novelty vs. value, depth vs. clarity, the Berlyne arousal curve. Balancing them is the work.
3. Before you finish — score and gate. Read references/review-checklist.md. Score each principle 0–3, apply the two hard gates, total out of 18, apply the decision rule, and route any revision to the principle that failed. Revise only the named principle, then re-score.

SKILL.md is the entry point and carries the full decision rule and per-platform calibration. Load reference files only when their moment arrives — this keeps context lean.

Structure

creativity-skill/
├── SKILL.md                              # Entry point: method, gates, decision rule, platform weighting
├── references/
│   ├── preflight-brief.md                # Eight pre-production prompts — load when starting a post
│   ├── review-checklist.md               # Scoring, gates, decision, revision routing — load when finishing
│   ├── theoretical-foundations.md        # Research and citations behind the principles
│   └── principles/
│       ├── 01-originality.md             # Each principle file carries: theory in brief,
│       ├── 02-expressiveness.md          #   a "Use for ideation" section, and a
│       ├── 03-aesthetic-appeal.md        #   "Use for review" section with 0–3 anchors.
│       ├── 04-technical-execution.md
│       ├── 05-unexpected-associations.md
│       └── 06-interpretability-depth.md
├── LICENCE.md
└── README.md

Install

This is an Agent Skill — a folder containing a SKILL.md and its supporting references. To use it with Claude Code, place the skill folder under a skills directory so the entry point lands at creativity/SKILL.md:

# Project-scoped (shared with your repo)
git clone https://github.com/contxtyfy/creativity-skill .claude/skills/creativity

# Or personal (available across all your projects)
git clone https://github.com/contxtyfy/creativity-skill ~/.claude/skills/creativity

Claude loads the skill automatically when a task matches its description — creating, drafting, designing, ideating, reviewing, or scoring a social media post, caption, or graphic — even when "creativity" is not named explicitly.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENCE.md for the full text.

Copyright © 2026 Ryan David Ballantyne TA Contxtyfy (ABN 13 540 243 698).

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Built by Contxtyfy — clarity in complexity.