Competency Unpacker Agent Skill

Unpack a broad standard or competency descriptor into specific, assessable success criteria and sub-skills.

Context cost
4.5k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 18.1 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Unpack a broad standard or competency descriptor into specific, assessable success criteria and sub-skills. Use when interpreting curriculum standards or writing learning objectives.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

competencycurriculumdocumentationstandardssuccess-criteriaunpacking

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md18.1 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: competency-unpacker disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "curriculum-assessment/competency-unpacker" skill_name: "Competency Unpacker" domain: "curriculum-assessment" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Wiggins & McTighe (1998, 2005) — Understanding by Design: backward design from desired results" - "Marzano & Kendall (2007) — The New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" - "Heritage (2008) — Learning progressions: supporting instruction and formative assessment" - "Popham (2007) — The lowdown on learning progressions" - "Hattie (2009) — Visible Learning: success criteria and learning intentions" input_schema: required: - field: "competency_descriptor" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" optional: - field: "subject_area" type: "string" - field: "curriculum_framework" type: "string" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" - field: "assessment_purpose" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "observable_indicators" type: "array" - field: "prerequisite_knowledge" type: "array" - field: "common_misconceptions" type: "array" - field: "success_criteria" type: "object" chains_well_with: - "backwards-design-unit-planner" - "criterion-referenced-rubric-generator" - "learning-progression-builder" - "formative-assessment-technique-selector" - "curriculum-knowledge-architecture-designer" - "kud-knowledge-type-mapper" - "scope-and-sequence-designer" teacher_time: "3 minutes" tags: ["competency", "standards", "success-criteria", "unpacking", "curriculum"] ---
70# Competency Unpacker
71
72## What This Skill Does
73
74Takes a standard, learning objective, or competency descriptor — often written in abstract, compressed language — and unpacks it into four actionable components: observable indicators (what a student who has achieved this actually DOES), prerequisite knowledge (what must be in place first), common misconceptions (what typically goes wrong), and success criteria at multiple levels (beginning through extending). The output transforms opaque curriculum language into concrete, assessable, teachable components. AI is specifically valuable here because competency descriptors are deliberately compressed — a single sentence like "analyse how writers use language and structure to achieve effects" contains multiple skills, knowledge domains, and levels of sophistication that must be unpacked before they can be taught or assessed.
75
76## Evidence Foundation
77
78Wiggins & McTighe (1998, 2005) established that effective curriculum design begins with clarity about desired results — and that most curriculum standards require significant "unpacking" before they can be translated into instruction and assessment. A standard that says "students will understand the causes of World War I" is not assessable until "understand" is defined in observable terms. Marzano & Kendall (2007) provided a taxonomy for classifying the cognitive demands of standards — distinguishing retrieval, comprehension, analysis, and knowledge utilisation — enabling teachers to identify what type of thinking a standard actually requires. Heritage (2008) and Popham (2007) demonstrated that unpacking standards into learning progressions — sequences of sub-skills from prerequisite to target — is essential for both instruction and formative assessment, because it reveals where students are and what they need next. Hattie (2009) found that clear success criteria (effect size 0.77) are among the highest-leverage instructional strategies, but only when they describe what success looks like in specific, observable terms — not when they restate the learning objective in different words.
79
80## Input Schema
81
82The teacher must provide:
83- **Competency descriptor:** The standard or objective to unpack. *e.g. "Analyse how writers use language and structure to achieve effects and influence readers" / "Use ratio and proportion, including rates, to solve problems" / "Explain how changes in the environment may affect organisms"*
84- **Student level:** Year group. *e.g. "Year 9"*
85
86Optional (injected by context engine if available):
87- **Subject area:** The curriculum subject
88- **Curriculum framework:** Specific standards framework (e.g., National Curriculum, IB, ACARA)
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,414 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈700
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
3,825
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.3%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 23% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

4.5k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 18.1 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md18.1 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Competency Unpacker · 4.5k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/competency-unpacker/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/competency-unpacker" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/competency-unpacker ] || { mv .claude/skills/competency-unpacker "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/competency-unpacker" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/competency-unpacker"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/competency-unpacker

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/competency-unpacker/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/competency-unpacker/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/competency-unpacker" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/competency-unpacker ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/competency-unpacker "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/competency-unpacker" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/competency-unpacker" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/competency-unpacker/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/competency-unpacker

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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