crafting-effective-readmes — Claude Code skill for README files

What crafting-effective-readmes does

The skill guides README work from identifying the requested change to reviewing the finished document. It supports writing documentation for a new project, adding material about a feature, refreshing stale instructions, and checking whether an existing README still matches the project. The agent first establishes the task and the intended audience.

Different project types have their own templates: templates/oss.md for open-source projects, templates/personal.md for personal work and portfolios, templates/internal.md for team documentation, and templates/xdg-config.md for configuration files. Supporting references include section-checklist.md, style-guide.md, and using-references.md for deciding what to cover and how to write it.

Each README should include a title, a concise explanation of the project's purpose, and usage instructions. When reviewing existing documentation, the agent compares it with package.json and key project files before proposing specific edits. That comparison matters: instructions left over from an earlier implementation can mislead readers when the code no longer supports them.