Documents get rewritten in review because the structure was wrong — and structure feedback arrived after two days of prose polishing. The outline-first discipline moves that feedback to hour one: a skeleton where every section is a one-line claim (not a topic), a header naming the reader and the decision, and a five-minute outline review with the key stakeholder before any paragraphs exist. Prose expands an approved outline in one pass; prose written first defends itself against restructuring forever.
Outline Before Prose 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/outline-before-prose/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.
When to invoke it: Use when asked help me start this document, outline before I write, why do my docs get rewritten from scratch in review, or get sign-off before drafting. Produces the outline with each section's claim (not topic), the reader-and-decision header, the outline review step, and the expansion rules.
The Outline Before Prose 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 174,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/outline-before-prose curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/outline-before-prose/SKILL.md \ -o ~/.claude/skills/outline-before-prose/SKILL.md
Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/outline-before-prose/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.
Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/outline-before-prose/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\outline-before-prose\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 →
The ClaudSkills desktop app installs any skill directly into ~/.claude/skills/ with one click — no terminal required. Pro starts at $9/mo or $149 lifetime.
For the full experience including quality scoring and one-click install features for each skill — upgrade to Pro.
SKILL.md from the source repository to ~/.claude/skills/outline-before-prose/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. Outline Before Prose 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{outline-before-prose-2026,
author = {mohitagw15856},
title = {Outline Before Prose [Claude Code skill]},
year = {2026},
publisher = {ClaudSkills},
url = {https://claudskills.com/skills/outline-before-prose/}
}Grade A · scanned 2026-08-02 — free static scan against the OWASP Agentic Skills Top 10.
No risk patterns were found in any of the ten OWASP-aligned categories. How grading works ›
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.