Skills reference
Skills turn multi-step workflows into single commands. Type /trw-prd-new "Add rate limiting" and TRW handles the rest — create, groom, review, and plan in one pipeline. TRW ships 24 skills across five working groups, so you can start with a natural-language request and still land on a repeatable workflow.
Client note
Full-surface clients expose more native skill surfaces. Light profiles still benefit from the same workflows, but they may consume them through instructions or curated command sets instead of a full slash-command mirror.
Sprint & Delivery
Manage the full sprint lifecycle from initialization through delivery. These skills coordinate PRD selection, task breakdown, agent assignment, and the delivery gate that ensures nothing ships without verification.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /trw-sprint-init | Initialize a new sprint with PRD selection and tracking |
| /trw-sprint-finish | Complete sprint with build gate verification |
| /trw-sprint-team | Generate team playbooks for parallel agent work |
| /trw-deliver | Persist learnings and close the session |
| /trw-commit | Create a well-formatted git commit with type(scope) and PRD linking |
Tip
/trw-sprint-team generates playbooks with exclusive file ownership for each agent. This prevents merge conflicts when running parallel agent teams.
Requirements
Author, groom, review, and plan PRDs. Each skill targets a specific stage of the requirements pipeline. The full pipeline runs from a rough feature idea to a sprint-ready execution plan with file ownership.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /trw-prd-new | Create a new PRD and run the full readiness pipeline (groom, review, plan) |
| /trw-prd-ready | Full PRD lifecycle: create or pick up, groom, review, execution plan |
| /trw-prd-groom | Groom a PRD to sprint-ready quality |
| /trw-prd-review | Quality review with READY / NEEDS WORK verdict |
| /trw-exec-plan | Generate an execution plan from a groomed PRD |
Tip
Start with /trw-prd-new for new features. It runs the entire pipeline end-to-end. Use individual skills like /trw-prd-groom only when you need to re-run a specific stage.
PRD Pipeline — one command, sprint-ready
Type /trw-prd-new "your feature" and TRW handles the rest. The full pipeline runs automatically:
CREATE → GROOM (≥0.85) → REVIEW (READY) → EXEC PLAN
↑ │
└── NEEDS WORK ──────┘
(max 2 loops)/trw-prd-new "Add webhook notifications for learning events"
→ Created PRD-CORE-082 (6 FRs, EARS format)
→ Grooming pass 1: score 0.72 → added traceability matrix
→ Grooming pass 2: score 0.88 ✓
→ Review: READY (no blocking issues)
→ Execution plan:
Track A: src/webhooks/dispatcher.py (new)
Track B: src/models/webhook_config.py (new)
Track C: tests/test_webhooks.py (new)
Shared: src/config.py (modify — add webhook settings)For existing PRDs, use /trw-prd-ready PRD-CORE-020 to pick up wherever the PRD is in the pipeline.
Memory & Knowledge
Inspect, curate, and optimize the learning store that compounds across sessions. Over time, learnings accumulate duplicates, stale entries, and tag imbalances. These skills keep the knowledge base healthy.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /trw-memory-audit | Audit learning health: staleness, duplicates, tag distribution |
| /trw-memory-optimize | Prune stale entries, consolidate duplicates, rebalance tags |
| /trw-learn | Record a discovery for future sessions |
Tip
Run /trw-memory-audit monthly. It surfaces stale entries that waste context tokens and duplicate learnings that should be consolidated.
Quality & Review
Run audits, reviews, and refactoring passes. These skills cover security, test strategy, code duplication, spec compliance, and team coordination. They are the second line of defense after automated build checks.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /trw-audit | Adversarial spec-vs-code audit against PRD acceptance criteria |
| /trw-review-pr | Structured code review using FRAMEWORK.md rubric |
| /trw-simplify | Simplify code for clarity and maintainability |
| /trw-dry-check | Scan for duplicated code blocks |
| /trw-security-check | OWASP-focused security audit |
| /trw-test-strategy | Audit test coverage and suggest improvements |
| /trw-team-playbook | Generate teammate playbooks with file ownership |
Warning
/trw-audit runs adversarial verification — it deliberately looks for gaps between your PRD and implementation. Expect it to find issues even in code that passes all tests. That is the point.
Framework & Health
Monitor ceremony compliance, phase gate status, and overall project health. Use these when onboarding to a project or when something feels off with the development workflow.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /trw-framework-check | Check TRW ceremony compliance and phase gate status |
| /trw-project-health | Audit TRW health in the current project |
| /trw-ceremony-guide | Full ceremony and tool usage guide |
| /email-template | Generate email templates |
Info
/trw-project-health gives you a single-page summary of learning count, build pass rate, ceremony compliance, and configuration status. Start here when joining an existing TRW project.
Usage examples
Skills accept arguments inline. Here are common workflows showing what each skill actually produces.
Creating custom skills
You can create project-specific skills that your AI agent discovers automatically. This example uses Claude Code's local skill directory, but the same skill content can also be mirrored into other client-specific surfaces. A skill is a directory inside .claude/skills/ containing a SKILL.md file.
.claude/skills/
my-deploy/
SKILL.md # Required — frontmatter + instructions
my-db-migration/
SKILL.md
templates/ # Optional — supporting files---
name: my-deploy
description: >
Deploy the application to staging or production.
Runs health checks after deployment.
user-invocable: true
argument-hint: "[staging|production]"
allowed-tools: Read, Bash, Grep
---
# My Deploy Skill
## Steps
1. Run pre-deploy checks (build, lint, test)
2. Deploy to the specified environment
3. Run health checks against the deployed URL
4. Report success or rollback on failureInfo
The frontmatter fields name, description, and user-invocable are required. Set user-invocable: true for skills the user types directly, or false for skills loaded automatically as context (like brand voice guidelines).
Skills vs Tools
Skills and tools serve different roles. Understanding the difference helps you know when to type a command versus letting your agent work automatically.
| Aspect | Skills | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Invocation | You type a slash command (/trw-prd-new) | Your AI calls them automatically |
| Who triggers | The developer | The AI agent |
| Scope | Multi-step workflows (orchestrate many tools) | Single operations (one function call) |
| Protocol | Markdown instructions in SKILL.md files | MCP (Model Context Protocol) functions |
| Customizable | Create your own in .claude/skills/ or mirror the same workflow into your selected client surface | Built into the TRW MCP server |
| Example | /trw-prd-new "feature" runs create + groom + review + plan | trw_prd_create creates one PRD document |
How to prompt
You don't need to memorize commands. Describe what you want in natural language and TRW suggests the right skill.
"I'm done with this feature" → /trw-deliver
"Add user notifications" → /trw-prd-new
"Make PRD-CORE-020 sprint-ready" → /trw-prd-ready
"Review my changes before I push" → /trw-review-pr
"Start a new sprint" → /trw-sprint-init
"Check for security issues" → /trw-security-check
"What has my AI learned so far?" → /trw-memory-audit
"Clean up duplicate learnings" → /trw-memory-optimize
"Is the PRD good enough to build?" → /trw-prd-review
"Split this into parallel agent work" → /trw-sprint-team
"Is everything working correctly?" → /trw-project-healthNext steps
Skills sit between the intent layer and the execution layer. Read agents for the roles they delegate to, requirements for the PRD system they wrap, and tools for the primitives underneath.