swarm-zap/skills/llm-tool-best-practices/SKILL.md

SKILL.md — llm-tool-best-practices

Purpose

Reference guide synthesizing official Anthropic and OpenAI best practices for building, reviewing, and importing agent skills/tools. Use this when:

• Writing a new skill (SKILL.md or tool definition)
• Reviewing a downloaded ClawHub skill for safety
• Debugging why a tool is being misused or ignored by the model
• Optimizing a skill for a specific LLM (Claude vs. GPT)

How to use

Read LLM_TOOL_BEST_PRACTICES.md in this directory for the full reference.

Key sections:

1. Universal principles — applies to all LLMs
2. Anthropic/Claude-specific — schema format, model selection, input_examples, eval approach
3. OpenAI/GPT-specific — strict mode, tool count limits, reasoning model caveats, safety APIs
4. Differences summary — quick comparison table
5. Skill safety checklist — use before activating any downloaded skill
6. OpenClaw authoring notes — how to write SKILL.md files for this workspace

Sources

• https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agents-and-tools/tool-use/implement-tool-use
• https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/writing-tools-for-agents
• https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/function-calling
• https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/safety-best-practices

Last updated

2026-03-05