How to use the Coffee Taste Advisor agent skill

What the Coffee skill makes the agent do

The skill holds your coffee taste as a markdown file called the taste corpus. Its Taste Profile section contains your own words and the screening rules the agent applies, including hard rules such as a roast range, rejected flavors or brew methods you do not use. Roasters describe beans in language that makes it hard to tell whether a coffee suits your palate, so the agent screens each pick against this written profile instead of guessing from memory.

The skill also reads your gear notes, which list your grinders, brewers and the brew defaults tuned to your profile. Every brew or gear answer is tied to that equipment.

• Recommend a coffee for now or for a mood
• Discover new coffees that fit your profile, beyond your usual roaster
• Answer gear and brew questions such as brew ratio and grind for your setup
• Add or log coffees you have tried, keeping your list up to date

Install the Coffee skill

Download the Coffee skill ZIP from this page. You can install it in one of three ways, depending on where you use your agent.

For Claude Code, unzip the download into ~/.claude/skills/ to make it available everywhere, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder to limit it to that project. In the Claude apps, upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills instead.

The agent must read SKILL.md skill files. Claude Code is the example the source names.

• Claude Code, all projects: ~/.claude/skills/
• Claude Code, one project: the project's .claude/skills/ folder
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload the ZIP

Set up your taste corpus and gear notes

The skill needs two files before it can give personal answers. The first is Config.md, which lives in your LIFEOS customization folder and points to the other two. By default that location is LIFEOS/USER/CUSTOMIZATIONS/SKILLS/Coffee/ inside your configuration root, which is $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR when set, otherwise ~/.claude.

Config.md names a taste corpus file (by default CoffeeReference.md in that same folder) and a gear notes file (by default the Coffee section of LIFEOS/USER/GEAR.md). The Setup.md file in the skill walks through creating these files, the corpus format and a read-only check. Ask the agent to run setup if you have not done it yet.

Neither file holds secrets, and the skill needs no account.

• Config.md: points to the corpus and gear notes
• Taste corpus: your taste words, hard rules and coffee rows grouped in Batch sections
• Gear notes: your grinder, brewer and brew defaults

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. Ask in ordinary language and the agent routes the request to the right part of the skill. Requests like recommending a coffee go to the Recommend intent. Requests to find new coffees beyond your usual roaster go to DiscoverCoffees. Requests to add or log a coffee go to AddCoffee.

A plain question such as what do I like or what is my gear needs no special intent. The agent reads the corpus or gear notes and answers directly.

• Recommend: 'what coffee should I get', 'coffee like X', 'what should I drink'
• Discover: 'discover coffees', 'what else fits my taste', 'beyond my usual roaster'
• Add: 'log this coffee', 'I love X now', 'update my coffee list'
• Gear and brew: 'how should I brew for the taste I like', 'what is my brew ratio'

Read the results: favorites versus candidates

Each coffee row in the corpus has one of two source tags. A ⭐ favorite means you said you love it. A 👂 candidate means it fits your profile or someone recommended it, but you have not confirmed it. The skill never turns a candidate into a favorite on its own. Only your own words do that.

When a suggestion breaks a hard rule, such as a brew method you do not use, the agent should leave it out rather than offer it. Each suggestion should include one line on why it fits your profile.

• ⭐ favorite: confirmed by you
• 👂 candidate: fits the profile or was recommended, not yet confirmed
• If a match is near the roaster's listed name, the agent records the alias in the Notes column

Safety notes: scripts and network

The listing says this skill does not run scripts and does not use the network. The skill only reads and writes markdown files in your configuration folder, and it does not handle ordering or cafe visits. Those requests belong to the separate Restaurants skill.

One point to check: the DiscoverCoffees instructions say each find should carry a link or source fetched for that request. That conflicts with the no-network listing, so if you use discovery, look at what your agent actually does and whether it fetches web pages.

• No scripts are run by the skill
• No network use is declared in the listing; discovery instructions mention fetching sources, so review that step
• Gear updates are written to your gear notes file, not into the skill itself