# Maker Skills

> A collection of 19 open-source AI agent skills for founders and indie operators, covering decisions, research, second-brain workflows, content rotation, and meta-skills to author more.

Maker Skills is an open-source plugin for AI coding agents — built by Corey Haines, founder of Conversion Factory and Magister — that packages 19 structured workflow skills for founders and indie operators. It installs via `npx skills add` or Claude Code's plugin marketplace and works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other Agent Skills hosts. The project is MIT-licensed and has accumulated over 461 stars on GitHub since its creation.

## What It Is

Maker Skills is a skill pack — a collection of SKILL.md workflow documents that AI agents load and execute on demand. Each skill is a structured, documentation-first workflow: the agent reads the SKILL.md, follows the steps, and produces written output to disk. The plugin is not a SaaS product or hosted service; it runs locally inside your AI coding agent environment. Skills cover five families: meta/authoring (`skillify`, `toolify`, `loopify`), decision and strategy (`decide`, `business-brainstorm`, `domain`, `deep-research`, `unstuck`), knowledge and content consumption (`second-brain`, `company-brain`, `read-book`, `watch-video`), output and creative (`jab-hook`, `slide-deck`), and operations and utilities (`pm`, `personal-cfo`, `company-cfo`, `paste`, `social-fetch`).

## How the Skill Architecture Works

Each skill is a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter (`name`, `description`, `metadata.version`) that tells the agent when to load it and what triggers it. Skills compose with each other by name — when one skill's job hits an adjacent job, it routes to the sibling rather than reimplementing. The most-referenced skills in the collection are `watch-video` (54 cross-references), `skillify` (51), `second-brain` (48), `slide-deck` (38), and `company-brain` (33). Personal data (config, archives, vault paths) lives separately in `~/.config/makerskills/` and is never committed to the public repo, keeping the repository generic and shareable.

## The 19 Skills at a Glance

- **Meta (`-ify` trifecta):** `skillify` creates/adapts/updates skills; `toolify` wires APIs and MCP servers into Next.js or Rails projects; `loopify` sets up agent loops and cron-scheduled tasks.
- **Decision & strategy:** `decide` applies the 37signals framework (38 questions, triaged to 6–8 per decision, with Q39 opportunity cost added in v1.4.0); `unstuck` classifies blockers and runs lateral-thinking techniques; `domain` runs an 11-step .com hunt using Vercel CLI, Domainr, Namecheap, RDAP, and USPTO trademark screening.
- **Knowledge:** `second-brain` manages a personal markdown vault (Karpathy LLM Wiki workflow); `company-brain` is the team-scope sibling with multi-author attribution, sensitivity tagging, and optional auto-sync from Fathom/Gong/Granola/CRM.
- **Output:** `jab-hook` plans social content rotation on X and LinkedIn via Typefully; `slide-deck` generates branded React decks in Next.js with PPT conversion and Playwright export.
- **Ops:** `personal-cfo` models household financial scenarios; `company-cfo` runs monthly/weekly CFO cadence pulling from bank, payment processor, payroll, and expense management integrations.

## Setup Path

Installation takes one command in Claude Code (`/plugin marketplace add coreyhaines31/makerskills`) or via `npx skills add coreyhaines31/makerskills`. Local development uses a symlink from the cloned repo into `~/.claude/plugins/makerskills`. The recommended first-touch experience is running `/decide` with no config required, then reading one SKILL.md to understand the pattern, then trying `/paste twitter` as a pure utility with no config file needed. Full env var setup is documented in INSTALL.md.

## Update: v1.4.0 — decide: Q39 Opportunity Cost

The latest release, v1.4.0 (published July 16, 2026), adds Q39 opportunity cost to the `decide` skill's 37signals question framework. The project uses two levels of semver: a plugin-level release tag for the overall collection and per-skill `metadata.version` in each SKILL.md frontmatter that evolves independently. A related skill pack, `marketingskills`, extends the ecosystem with 46 marketing-focused skills covering CRO, copywriting, SEO, and ads.

## Features
- 19 structured AI agent skills for founders and indie operators
- Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other Agent Skills hosts
- Skills compose with each other by name for modular workflows
- Documentation-first SKILL.md format — invoke via agent or run steps manually
- Personal config stored locally in ~/.config/makerskills/ (never committed)
- 37signals decision framework with Q39 opportunity cost (decide skill)
- 11-step .com domain hunt with multi-tool ensemble (domain skill)
- Personal and company knowledge base management (second-brain, company-brain)
- Social content rotation planning via Typefully (jab-hook skill)
- Branded React slide deck generation with PPT conversion (slide-deck skill)
- Personal and company CFO financial scenario modeling
- Meta-skills to create, adapt, and update skills (skillify, toolify, loopify)
- Secret-detection before clipboard output (paste skill)
- Multi-source research with citations and archive (deep-research skill)
- Lateral-thinking roadblock classifier (unstuck skill)

## Integrations
Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Typefully, Notion, GitHub, Linear, Plane, Obsidian, Domainr API, Namecheap API, Vercel CLI, Fathom, Gong, Granola, YouTube, Loom, Vimeo, Riverside, Zoom, Playwright, Slack, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), TikTok, Bluesky, Reddit, Mastodon, Threads, Hacker News

## Platforms
WINDOWS, LINUX, API, CLI

## Pricing
Open Source

## Version
v1.4.0

## Links
- Website: https://maker-skills.com
- Documentation: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/makerskills/blob/main/INSTALL.md
- Repository: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/makerskills
- EveryDev.ai: https://www.everydev.ai/tools/maker-skills