Whetstone · 20 skills · CC BY 4.0

Every skill
here is a scar.

Agent skills honed on real work. Each one is a short, self-contained rule set distilled from one concrete failure — written so an AI coding agent (or a human) can apply the lesson without the original context.


Browse the 20 ↓
20
Skills
1
Failure each
0
Blog posts
Visits
What makes a whetstone skill

Not general advice. A scar.

01 / From a real failure

It happened.

Every skill names the sanitized case it was distilled from — a check that passed against a stand-in, a merge that dropped a field, a green test that could never fail. No hypotheticals.

02 / Client-agnostic

It generalizes.

No project or company detail survives. The lesson is stripped to its mechanism so it transfers to your codebase, your stack, your next incident.

03 / Fails loudly

It has an edge.

Each ends in a pre-flight checklist that fails loudly when a box is unchecked — a gate on "done," not a suggestion you can wave through.

If it reads like a blog post, it doesn't belong. If it reads like a checklist a tired engineer would thank you for at 3am, it does.
The collection

Twenty edges,
grouped by grind.

Each links to its SKILL.md — the full rule set, the sanitized case, and the pre-flight check.

Anatomy of a skill

Same shape,
every time.

One folder, one SKILL.md. Plain Markdown, so any agent that can load a system prompt can use it — the plugin auto-discovery is the only Claude Code-specific part.

  • frontmatter

    name + description

    The description carries the trigger phrases, so a skill-aware agent surfaces the right skill when the situation matches.

  • the rule

    The core rule

    One paragraph. The whole lesson, stated once, before any elaboration.

  • the cases

    Checks

    Each rule paired with the sanitized real case it came from — the scar that earned it.

  • the gate

    Pre-flight check

    The checklist that gates "done" and fails loudly when a box is unchecked.

--- name: verify-through-the-real-path description: > Use before claiming something works, is done, is safe, or is fast — verify through the actual trigger, real data... --- # Verify Through the Real Path ## The core rule A convenient stand-in is not the thing you claimed works. Verify through the actual trigger, real data... ## Checks - Real trigger, not a direct call. ... - Smoke test = throughput floor. ... ## Pre-flight check - [ ] Fired through the real trigger? - [ ] Real data, representative load? - [ ] Observed the end effect?
Put an edge on it

Install

Two ways in. The plugin gives you auto-discovery; the manual copy is just folders.

Recommended

Claude Code plugin

Add the marketplace, then install the plugin — all 20 skills come with it. Run both inside Claude Code.

Copy> /plugin marketplace add iamakbarsha1/whetstone
Copy> /plugin install whetstone@whetstone-skills
Any agent

Manual copy

Each skill is a self-contained folder in the Claude Code skill layout. Copy one, or all of them.

Copy$ cp -R skills/verify-through-the-real-path ~/.claude/skills/
Copy$ cp -R skills/* ~/.claude/skills/