At AJPS the theory exists to generate testable expectations that the design and data then adjudicate. The journal's empirical bar means a model or argument earns its place only if it yields observable, falsifiable implications that the analysis can confront. This skill turns an idea into hypotheses, mechanisms, and scope conditions in the idiom your work demands.
Ajps Theory Building is a community-contributed Claude Code skill in the general-misc sub-category. It ships as a SKILL.md file that Claude Code auto-discovers under ~/.claude/skills/ajps-theory-building/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.
When to invoke it: Use when building the theoretical argument of an American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) manuscript — whether empirical with explicit mechanisms, formal/game-theoretic, or measurement-driven. AJPS rewards testable theory tightly linked to the empirical strategy, with hypotheses stated before the results.
The Ajps Theory Building Claude Code skill is built for Claude Code users and developers across all disciplines looking for general-purpose AI assistance. It's part of ClaudSkills (also referred to as Claude Skills or Claude Code Skills) — the open community-curated registry of 119,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/ajps-theory-building curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/ajps-theory-building/SKILL.md \ -o ~/.claude/skills/ajps-theory-building/SKILL.md
Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ajps-theory-building/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.
Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/ajps-theory-building/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\ajps-theory-building\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.
Open @claudskills_bot on Telegram, tap Open Desktop App, and the desktop app installs this skill for you. Or share the bot link with a colleague — they get the same one-tap install. Learn more →
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SKILL.md from the source repository to ~/.claude/skills/ajps-theory-building/SKILL.md and restart Claude Code. Both flows are detailed at claudskills.com/install/.SKILL.md file that lives under ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ and tells the Claude Code CLI agent how to perform a specific task (instructions, prompts, allowed tools). Skills are auto-discovered at session start. Ajps Theory Building is one of 67,000+ skills indexed in the open ClaudSkills catalog, classified under the General category. Learn more at /learn/what-is-a-claude-skill/.If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:
@misc{ajps-theory-building-2026,
author = {brycewang-stanford},
title = {Ajps Theory Building [Claude Code skill]},
year = {2026},
publisher = {ClaudSkills},
url = {https://claudskills.com/skills/ajps-theory-building/}
}Browse all General skills in the ClaudSkills registry, or explore these other picks from the same category:
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SKILL.md files, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.