Skip to content

Agent Skill

The desflow skill gives an AI coding assistant the rules of the library, so that it writes, checks, tests and runs desflow models instead of guessing them.

It is one of the ways desflow makes a simulation quicker to build. A YAML blueprint describes a whole model with no Python. The skill lets an assistant write that blueprint for you and check it. From history to simulation, planned after 1.0, starts a model from an event log.

The skill is a folder, skills/desflow/, in the Agent Skills format that Claude Code and other assistants read. An assistant that supports the format loads the skill when a request mentions desflow, a blueprint, a test of a simulation model, or a SimPy model that streams records. The folder is generated from the code, so it lists what the release has.

Tasks

Each page gives the request to type, what the skill tells the assistant to do, and the result on one example: the shop of the Learn tutorial, one packer and an order every 2 seconds, drafted from a description in words.

Task What the assistant gives you
Draft a Model a blueprint from a description of a process, with each assumed number marked, checked against queueing theory
Port a SimPy Program a desflow model that does what a SimPy program does, compared with the program's output
Write Another Form the Builder and Low-level forms of a blueprint, which give the same records
Write Tests tests of the statistics with desflow test, with expected values taken from the request
Run a Study replications with a confidence interval, and a comparison of designs with desflow experiment
Fit a Distribution a distribution fitted to measured times with desflow fit, loaded into the model

Install the Skill

  1. Install desflow, so the assistant can run the desflow commands that Command Line shows, such as desflow explain and desflow run.

  2. Copy skills/desflow/ into the skills folder of the assistant. Take it from the repository at the tag of the release you installed: v followed by what desflow --version prints. For Claude Code, ~/.claude/skills/desflow/ is for every project and .claude/skills/desflow/ in a project is for that project. With git, these lines copy it for every project:

    1
2
3
4
    # The source of the installed release, which holds the skill
git clone --depth 1 --branch "v$(desflow --version)" https://github.com/jaehyeon-kim/desflow /tmp/desflow-src
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -R /tmp/desflow-src/skills/desflow ~/.claude/skills/desflow

    The block is for a first install. Before you run it again, delete /tmp/desflow-src and ~/.claude/skills/desflow, because git clone stops at an existing folder and cp -R would put the new copy inside the old one. If CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is set, use that folder in place of ~/.claude, here and in the check below.

  3. Ask the assistant for a model, such as "write a desflow blueprint for a shop with two packers and a lunch rush, and run it". It reads the skill when the request mentions desflow or a blueprint.

With the GitHub CLI, one command does the copy. gh skill install is a preview command of the GitHub CLI, so it needs gh 2.90.0 or later:

1
gh skill install jaehyeon-kim/desflow desflow --agent claude-code --scope user

--scope user installs for every project, in your home folder. --scope project, the default, installs for the current project, inside its git repository, so run it from that repository. Another assistant takes its own --agent value, listed in gh skill install --help. Without --agent, gh asks which assistant to install for. When it cannot ask, it installs for GitHub Copilot. At project scope, Copilot uses .agents/skills, a folder several other assistants also read. gh installs the latest release. desflow@v<version> in place of desflow pins one, with <version> the release you installed.

Check the Install

The folder must hold SKILL.md, and Claude Code lists the skills it has loaded with /skills, where desflow must appear:

1
ls ~/.claude/skills/desflow/SKILL.md

Other Ways to Teach an Assistant

  • Schema. Give the assistant https://jaehyeon.me/desflow/latest/schema/blueprint.schema.json, or the output of desflow schema, to validate what it writes.
  • Documentation as text. https://jaehyeon.me/desflow/latest/llms.txt is an index of the pages, and https://jaehyeon.me/desflow/latest/llms-full.txt holds all of them in one file.

Sources

The folder layout and the SKILL.md fields follow the Agent Skills specification. The folders Claude Code reads are in its skills documentation. The gh skill install flags are those of gh skill install --help in GitHub CLI 2.95.0.