I’ve been using Claude Code as my primary dev tool for months. At some point I noticed I was copy-pasting the same instructions into every conversation: “review this PR properly,” “check for secrets before I push,” “summarize that conference talk I don’t have 2 hours for.” So I started writing skills. One at a time, each solving a specific recurring frustration. That snowballed into armory : 92 packages (skills, agents, hooks, rules, commands, presets) that I now use daily. Here are the ones that changed how I work: /youtube-analysis : Probably my most-used skill. I consume a lot of technical content (conference talks, paper walkthroughs, deep-dive tutorials), but I rarely have time to watch a full 90-minute video to find out if the 3 ideas I care about are actually in there. This skill pulls the transcript (no API keys, pure Python), fetches metadata via yt-dlp, and has Claude produce a structured breakdown: multi-level summary, key concepts with timestamps, technical terms defined in context, and actionable takeaways. I paste a URL, get back a Markdown document I can actually search and reference. I’ve used it on everything from arXiv paper walkthroughs to 3-hour podcast episodes. It has a fallback chain too. Tries youtube-transcript-api first, falls back to yt-dlp subtitle extraction if that fails. /concept-to-image : I needed diagrams and visuals constantly (architecture overviews, comparison charts, flow diagrams for docs). Every time, it was either open Figma, fight with draw.io, or ask Claude and get something I couldn’t edit. This skill generates an HTML/CSS/SVG intermediate first. I can see it, say “make the title bigger,” “swap those colors,” “add a third column,” iterate until it looks right, and then export to PNG or SVG. The HTML is the editable layer. No Figma, no round-trips to an image generator where every tweak means starting over. /concept-to-video : Same philosophy, but for animated explainers. I wanted a short animation showing how a RAG pipeline works for a blog post. Normally that’s “learn After Effects” territory. This skill uses Manim (the Python animation library behind 3Blue1Brown): describe the concept, it writes a Python scene file, renders a low-quality preview, you iterate (“slow down that transition,” “make the arrows red”), then do a final render to MP4 or GIF. I’ve used it for architecture animations, algorithm walkthroughs, and pipeline explainers. /md-to-pdf : Sounds boring until you need it. I write everything in Markdown (docs, specs, reports). The moment I need a PDF with Mermaid diagrams and LaTeX equations rendered properly, every tool falls apart. This has a 5-stage pipeline: extract Mermaid blocks → render to SVG, pandoc conversion, server-side KaTeX for math, professional CSS injection, Playwright prints to PDF. Diagrams and equations just work. /pr-review : I work solo most of the time. No one to catch my mistakes. This runs a diff-based review across 5 dimensions: code quality, test coverage gaps, silent failure detection, type design analysis, and comment quality. It found a silent except: pass swallowing auth errors in a payment handler. That alone justified building it. idea-scout agent: Before I commit weeks to building something, I throw the idea at this agent. It spawns parallel sub-agents for market research, competitive analysis, and feasibility assessment simultaneously. Comes back with a Lean Canvas, SWOT/PESTLE synthesis, a weighted scorecard, and a GO/CAUTION/NO-GO verdict with recommended low-cost experiments to test the riskiest assumptions. Told me one of my ideas had a 3-player oligopoly in the space I thought was wide open. Saved me from building something dead on arrival. The philosophy behind all of these: no magic, no demos. Every skill defines inputs, outputs, edge cases, and failure modes. If a skill doesn’t survive daily use, it gets deprecated (3 already have). Repo: https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/armory . Browse the catalog, install what’s useful, and if you build something that survives your own daily use, PRs are open. submitted by /u/tom_mathews
Originally posted by u/tom_mathews on r/ClaudeCode