# Writing Skills

> Writing Skills is a community-maintained skill from obra/superpowers. Anomity scores its risk at 50 out of 100 (medium).

- **Canonical URL:** https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/writing-skills
- **Kind:** Skill
- **Publisher:** obra/superpowers
- **Trust level:** community
- **Risk score:** 50/100 (medium)
- **Last updated:** 2026-09-02
- **JSON:** https://catalog.anomity.ai/api/entries/skill/writing-skills

## Description

Writing Skills is the meta-skill from the Superpowers plugin: it is the skill the agent uses when the task is to create a new skill, edit an existing skill, or verify a skill works before it ships. It encodes the structure that every other Superpowers skill follows — frontmatter, description, trigger conditions, body content, and any associated reference material — and provides the verification steps that confirm a new skill is wired into the plugin correctly.

Functionally, the skill reads existing skills as examples and templates and writes new or edited skill files into the plugin's skill directory. It does not request shell execution, network access, or credentials, and it does not invoke other skills — it produces them.

The skill is community trust and declares only filesystem read and write capabilities, which produce a routine risk signal and do not match any dangerous combination. Its practical importance is structural: because every other Superpowers skill is created through this skill, it is the right place to validate conventions, enforce naming, and catch trigger-condition mistakes that would otherwise cause a new skill to silently never activate.

## Why it scored 50

The score starts at the catalog's neutral base of 50 and moves only through the signals below. The formula is published at https://catalog.anomity.ai/about — there is no model and no hidden heuristic.

| Signal | Contribution | Severity | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Established community project | -10 | trust offset |  |
| 1 high-risk capability: filesystem:write | +10 | high |  |

Clamped result: **50/100**, band **medium**.

## Capabilities

| Capability | Name | Security implication |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `filesystem:read` | Filesystem read | Can read files on the host system. Used for context, indexing, or analysis. |
| `filesystem:write` | Filesystem write | Can create, edit, or delete files on the host system. High-impact capability — anything from helpful edits to planting persistence. |

## Related skills

- [AI Research Reproduction](https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/ai-research-reproduction) — risk 100 (critical)
- [Using Git Worktrees](https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/using-git-worktrees) — risk 65 (high)
- [Best Practices](https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/web-best-practices) — risk 50 (medium)
- [Test-Driven Development](https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/test-driven-development) — risk 50 (medium)
- [Angular Developer](https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/angular-developer) — risk 20 (low)
- [App Insights Instrumentation](https://catalog.anomity.ai/skill/appinsights-instrumentation) — risk 20 (low)

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Source: Anomity Catalog (https://catalog.anomity.ai/). Scoring methodology: https://catalog.anomity.ai/about. Machine-readable index: https://catalog.anomity.ai/llms.txt · https://catalog.anomity.ai/openapi.json