SkillForge v5.0.0 - Context-Efficient Redesign

What's New in v5.0

Redesigned around a single insight from Vercel's skill-creator: the context window is a public good. Every line in SKILL.md competes with the user's actual work.

Breaking Changes

• Frontmatter simplified to name + description only. Fields like license, metadata, disable-model-invocation are no longer expected by validators.
• README.md excluded from installation — exists in the repo for GitHub browsing but is not part of the skill. Use .skillignore to control what gets packaged.

Highlights

• SKILL.md slimmed from 872 to 313 lines (64% reduction). Deep dives moved to references/ where they belong.
• Triggers moved into description — the description field is the primary routing mechanism; the body only loads after triggering.
• New: .skillignore — controls which files are excluded from .skill packages (like .gitignore for skill distribution). package_skill.py now respects these patterns.
• New: Degrees of Freedom concept (references/degrees-of-freedom.md) — match instruction specificity to task fragility (high/medium/low freedom).
• New: Iteration guide (references/iteration-guide.md) — iteration is now a formal step in the skill creation process.
• New: init_skill.py scaffold script — creates rich skill templates with TODO placeholders, organizational pattern suggestions, and example resource files.
• Updated validators — validate-skill.py and quick_validate.py aligned to new frontmatter standard.

Full Changelog

v4.0.0...v5.0.0