Nathan Cheng

Generate keyword strings for images, screenshots, or visual references — optimized for fuzzy search, not alt text or prose. Use when the user says 'keywords for this image', 'tag this for search', 'visual keywords', or wants searchable labels on an Eagle asset.

Search, read, filter, combine, adapt, and save recipes in the Brain vault collection. Use whenever cooking and the collection are relevant — 'what should I make', 'recipes with miso', 'save this one' all imply it.

Find and validate startup ideas by mining user complaints, crafting premises, and navigating the idea maze. Use when discovering product opportunities, validating ideas, shaping solutions, researching user pain points, or exploring what to build.

Tailwind CSS v4 syntax and v3→v4 migration reference. Use when the user mentions 'Tailwind v4', 'upgrade Tailwind', @theme, @utility, or @import 'tailwindcss', or is working in a project whose config indicates v4.

Add or revise a project's Keep-a-Changelog-format changelog, including version bumps and change-type groupings. Use when the user says 'update the changelog', 'log this change', or 'bump the changelog' for a project or plugin.

Transcribe audio or video to text with a locally-run speech-to-text model. Use when the user wants a transcript or captions from a recording, wants to run speech-to-text locally instead of a cloud service, or wants to set up or switch their local transcription model.

Operate a tirith setup — the terminal command analyzer guarding against homograph URLs, ANSI injection, and pipe-to-shell exploits. Use when editing ~/.config/tirith/policy.yaml, debugging a blocked command, choosing between allowlist / tirith run / TIRITH=0 bypass, or verifying with tirith doctor.

Read, capture, schedule, and update tasks and projects in Things 3. Prefer the `things` CLI whenever there's command-line access to Things; otherwise use a connected Things MCP for headless or remote environments (full read + write, any device), the `things:///` URL scheme (any device with Things, write-only), or email-to-Things for unattended capture. Use to add todos, build a project, show Today/Inbox, find tagged tasks, or schedule from desktop, phone, or a serverless routine.

Use when the user asks to learn a concept or understand completed work through stepwise tutoring, checks for understanding, or a saved walkthrough or learning record.

Pick Lucide icons for a concept, UI placement, or vault note. Searches the full Lucide catalog for real, verified icon names. Use when the user says 'what icon for X', 'suggest a Lucide icon', 'pick an icon', or needs an icon for note frontmatter, a button, or a section header.

Shape product ideas into actionable specs and sprint plans. Use when interviewing about a product plan, breaking specs into sprints, or turning vague ideas into well-scoped work.

Review software test suites and choose test levels. Use when auditing unit, integration, component, or end-to-end tests; assessing assertions, fixtures, mocks, coverage, or flakiness; or deciding which test level best protects a behavior or risk.

Use when writing a note's description property for recall or retrieval. Summarizes a note's own content; parent-period synthesis belongs to periodic-rollup or the environment's specific rollup workflow.

Compress wordy language or loosely expressed thinking into a smaller, sharper form without flattening its meaning. Use when revising an explanation, phrase, sentence, paragraph, concept, label, or coined term whose nuance, implication, or texture must survive the edit.

Use when saving an encountered term or a concept coined in conversation as a Brain Term note, with its source quote or a brief gloss.

Turn raw capture material into a properly structured Brain vault note (template, frontmatter, folder, links), or integrate a fragment into an existing note after confirmation. Use when filing a quick capture — triggers: 'save this as a note', 'file this', 'napkin note', 'process this dump'.

README and other user-facing repo docs (setup guides, docs/ pages, security and contributing notes, release notes). Use when writing, revising, or auditing them, or preparing a repo's docs for public release. Agent-facing files such as AGENTS.md belong to writing-for-agents.

React useEffect best practices. Use when writing Effects, derived values, or data fetching. Teaches when NOT to use Effects and better alternatives like useMemo or key props.

Build Raycast extensions — commands, List/Form/Grid views, hooks like useFetch, AI integration, manifest. Use when the user says 'raycast extension', 'add a raycast command', or is working in a project with @raycast/api and a Raycast manifest.

Surface measurable metrics and outcomes from a description of work via structured conversation. Use when the user says 'help me quantify this', 'what numbers can I attach to X', or is drafting a resume bullet, case study, or impact statement that needs concrete scale.

Use when synthesizing child periodic-note descriptions into a parent week, quarter, or year, or compiling project/topic history. Prefer a vault-specific rollup workflow when the environment provides one.

Use for person-centered work in Nathan's Brain vault: prepare context from a profile and linked records, create a canonical person note, or reconcile an existing one.

Use when creating, importing, or debugging Obsidian Web Clipper templates: JSON, variables, filters, selectors, interpreter prompts, and URL or schema triggers. Does not handle general scraping.

Help with templates/snippets for the Obsidian Templater plugin. Use to help generate Obsidian templates from natural language, understand and debug existing tp.* snippets, and adapt vault notes and workflows to Templater when users mention Templater, tp.*, templater syntax.

Use when theming or scripting an Obsidian Publish site through publish.css or publish.js, including client-side workarounds. Excludes ordinary Publish usage, desktop themes, and plugins.

Fetches today's GitHub commits across personal and org repos, filters noise, and appends a summary as bullets into the ## Log section of today's daily note. Use when asked to log what was worked on today, check today's commits, or update the daily note with dev activity.

Sync meetings from Granola to Obsidian — pulls notes and transcripts and imports them as formatted meeting/transcript notes. Use when the user says "sync my last granola meeting", "note for my last meeting", or asks to pull in a Granola transcript.

Use when operating Obsidian from the terminal: notes, search, properties, links, tasks, Bases, or plugin development. Uses the app CLI, with notesmd-cli as a headless fallback.

Use when writing, debugging, auditing, or reorganizing CSS snippets or app themes for Obsidian desktop/mobile, including DOM selectors, CSS variables, platform classes, plugin/theme compatibility, specificity, or cascade conflicts. Excludes hosted Publish, publish.css, and publish.js.

Use when creating, editing, migrating, installing, or publishing skills in Nathan's environment. Routes source ownership, public/private placement, authoring conventions, install mechanics, and release boundaries.

Use alongside the managed herdr skill whenever recognized agents communicate through Herdr: peer tasks, reports, questions, corrections, return paths, origin checks, or stalled delivery. This skill owns the peer protocol; herdr owns runtime control.

Analyze file content and propose intelligent renames using context-aware naming conventions. Date-prefixed for transactional/periodic documents, content-first for creative works. Use for organizing files, cleaning up downloads, or standardizing filenames.

Use when extracting an actual workflow, user journey, or operational scenario from a conversation into a sequence of actors, state changes, and pain points.

Enrich an existing meeting/interview note from its transcript, or scaffold one when only a transcript exists. Captures granular narrative, exact phrases, mechanics, casual context, and implicit signals. Run on thin auto-summary notes or transcripts that warrant close reading.

Writing-partner processes that draw out the user's own writing through questioning: guided drafting sessions, fragment mining, shaping raw material into a piece, and phrase tightening. Use for help discovering, developing, and structuring writing (notes, essays, messages, etc).

Create a topic note grouping related notes under a common theme, with automatic backlinking to source notes. Triggers: 'group these under a topic', 'create topic note for [[A]], [[B]], [[C]]'.

Create well-formatted commits with conventional commit messages. Use when user asks to commit, wants to commit changes, or needs help with commit messages.

Use when looking up reusable components in Nathan's pantry, bringing one into a project, or saving a code technique to the pantry for reuse.

Save `bunx skills` terminal output (a manifest from `skills add/use <repo> -l`) as a Repos note in the Brain vault under 03-Records/Snippets/Repos/. Use when the user pastes a skills listing and wants it captured. Triggers: '/clip-skills', 'save these skills', 'make a note for this skill repo'.

Set up a durable /lab section in a website: a sidebar shell over design experiments, a tested registry, and the host agents-file conventions that make future lab authoring work.

Use alongside bb-cli when coordinating work across bb threads: delegation, ownership, environment boundaries, steering, reports, review, reconciliation, or handoff. bb-cli owns commands; this skill owns collaboration.

Flag and propose corrections for likely mistranscriptions in auto-transcribed meeting notes or audio transcripts. Use when the user says 'audit this transcript', 'fix the transcription', 'find mistranscriptions', or shares a noisy Granola/Whisper output and asks for cleanup.

Save an archival summary of an AI conversation to Nathan's Obsidian vault, using the Thinking note template and vault folder conventions to capture intellectual journeys, key insights, and technical logs. Use when archiving a chat session to the vault.

Create analytical archival summaries of AI conversations, capturing intellectual journeys, key insights, and technical logs. Use when archiving, saving, or documenting a chat session.