How to use the Course Style Reference agent skill

What the course-style skill makes the agent do

An agent skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file and reference files that an AI agent can read when a task matches. This skill is a reference layer. It holds the exact values for the AI Engineering from Scratch look and voice, and it tells the agent how to check its work against them.

Once installed, the agent uses the light and dark colour tokens, the required font stacks, the FIG_ label format, card and figure layout, and the plain technical English rules. It can also check written text against those rules and apply accessibility and reduced motion defaults. It does not draw figures itself.

• Colour tokens for light and dark mode, with one accent colour per page.
• Font stacks and the Google Fonts link used by the course.
• FIG_ label formats for figures, sub-figures and captions.
• Plain technical English limits, such as sentence length and banned words.
• Focus outlines, touch target sizes and a reduced motion block.

Install the course-style skill with a ZIP or the Claude apps

Download the ZIP of the course-style folder from this page. To install it for your user account, unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/. To install it for one project, unzip it into that project's .claude/skills/ folder.

In the Claude apps, you can instead upload the skill under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• User-wide install: unzip into ~/.claude/skills/.
• Project install: unzip into the project's .claude/skills/ folder.
• Claude apps: upload under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

Trigger the skill with natural requests

The skill's description lists trigger phrases. You do not need to type them exactly, but using them makes it clear what you want. The phrases include "course style", "blueprint palette", "course tokens", "FIG label", "plain technical English", "check my prose", "course fonts" and "dark mode tokens".

The skill is for course pages, cards, figures and manuals. It does not apply to pages that belong to a product with its own brand.

• Ask for the dark mode token values for a course page.
• Ask the agent to check a paragraph against the plain technical English rules.
• Ask which font stack and link a course page should use.

Examples of what to ask

Give the agent a specific task and the file it applies to. The skill then points the agent to the right reference file, such as tokens, typography, labels and layout, plain English or accessibility.

• "Use course style to set up light and dark tokens for this new lesson page."
• "Check my prose against the plain technical English rules and list every banned word."
• "Label this figure in course FIG_ format and keep the label separators as middle dots."
• "Add the reduced motion block and focus outlines to this card component."

What the skill needs and how it runs

The skill lists no required tools. It runs no scripts and it uses no network access. The checker is a reference that the agent applies to your text. The source audit script lives in the wider repo, not in this folder, so this skill does not run checks automatically.

The source values live in site/style.css, manuals/_shared/tokens.css and scripts/audit_manuals.js inside the AI Engineering from Scratch repo.

• Requires: nothing listed.
• Runs scripts: no.
• Uses network: no.
• Licence: MIT.

Safety notes and limits

Because the skill runs no scripts and uses no network, it changes nothing on its own. The agent reads the reference files and applies them to the work you ask for. Review the output before you publish it.

The skill hard-codes the course palette and fonts. Projects with their own brand should use their own tokens. For static SVG drawing or animated figures, the skill says to use blueprint-figure, motion-figure, or isometric-explainer instead.

• Do not expect automatic checks; the agent applies the rules when asked.
• Do not use it for a brand that differs from the course palette and fonts.
• Use blueprint-figure or motion-figure for drawing figures.