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This guide walks through creating a Colin project that compiles a skill from live sources. If you haven’t already installed Colin, follow the installation instructions.

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Initialize a Project

Create a new directory and initialize a Colin project: 
mkdir my-skill && cd my-skill
colin init
This creates:
  • colin.toml - Project configuration
  • models/ - Directory for your source documents

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Create a Source Document

Start with a simple document that will be referenced by the skill:
models/environments.md
---
name: Environment Configuration
---

## Staging
- URL: staging.acme.com
- Auto-deploys on merge to main

## Production
- URL: acme.com
- Manual promotion via `/deploy prod` in Slack

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Create a Skill

Now create a skill that references the environments document:
models/deploy/SKILL.md
---
name: deployment-process
description: How to deploy code to staging and production
---

# Deployment

{{ ref('environments').content }}

## Steps

1. Create a PR against main
2. Wait for CI to pass
3. Get approval from a code owner
4. Merge to main
The ref('environments') call does two things:
  1. Registers that SKILL.md depends on environments.md
  2. Returns the compiled content

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Compile

Run the compiler: 
colin run
Colin displays progress: 
Config:  colin.toml
Project: my-skill
Output:  output/

✓ environments.md
✓ deploy/SKILL.md
  ← ref:environments
Colin detected the dependency and compiled environments.md first.

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Add LLM Processing

The | llm_extract() filter pulls specific information using an LLM:
models/deploy/SKILL.md
---
name: deployment-process
description: How to deploy code to staging and production
---

# Deployment

{{ ref('environments').content }}

## Steps

1. Create a PR against main
2. Wait for CI to pass
3. Get approval from a code owner
4. Merge to main

## Quick Reference

{{ ref('environments') | llm_extract('a one-line summary of each environment') }}
Compile again: 
colin run

Config:  colin.toml
Project: my-skill
Output:  output/

✓ environments.md
✓ deploy/SKILL.md
  ← ref:environments
  ✓ llm:auto:a1b2c3
The ✓ llm: entry shows an LLM call completed. On subsequent runs with the same input, you’ll see » indicating the result was served from cache.

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Output to Claude Code

Configure Colin to write directly to Claude Code’s skills folder:
colin.toml
[project]
name = "my-skill"

[project.output]
target = "claude-skill"
scope = "user"
Run colin run again. The skill now appears in ~/.claude/skills/ and is available in all Claude Code sessions.

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Incremental Builds

Edit environments.md and run colin run again. Colin detects the change and recompiles SKILL.md because it depends on environments.md. Documents that haven’t changed skip compilation.

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What’s Next?

You’ve learned the basics:
  • Initialize a project with colin init
  • Create documents with frontmatter
  • Reference other documents with ref()
  • Transform content with | llm_extract()
  • Output skills to Claude Code
Next: Agent Skills covers skills in depth, including MCP integration and multi-file skills.