Reggio Documentation Protocol Agent Skill

Design a pedagogical documentation protocol for making children's learning processes visible and shareable.

Context cost
6.2k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 24.7 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design a pedagogical documentation protocol for making children's learning processes visible and shareable. Use when documenting learning, communicating with families, or planning next steps.

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.

documentationearly-yearsmalaguzziobservationprimaryreggio-emiliarinaldivisible-learning-processes

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.md24.7 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: reggio-documentation-protocol disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "global-cross-cultural-pedagogies/reggio-documentation-protocol" skill_name: "Reggio Documentation Protocol" domain: "global-cross-cultural-pedagogies" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "moderate" evidence_sources: - "Rinaldi (2006) — In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: listening, researching and learning" - "Malaguzzi (1993) — For an education based on relationships" - "Krechevsky, Mardell, Rivard & Wilson (2013) — Visible Learners: promoting Reggio-inspired approaches in all schools" - "Edwards, Gandini & Forman (2012) — The Hundred Languages of Children: the Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd edition)" - "Giudici, Rinaldi & Krechevsky (2001) — Making Learning Visible: children as individual and group learners" input_schema: required: - field: "learning_experience" type: "string" - field: "documentation_purpose" type: "string" optional: - field: "student_level" type: "string" - field: "documentation_format" type: "string" - field: "subject_area" type: "string" - field: "team_context" type: "string" - field: "available_tools" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "documentation_protocol" type: "object" - field: "observation_focus" type: "object" - field: "recording_strategies" type: "array" - field: "interpretation_framework" type: "object" - field: "sharing_plan" type: "object" chains_well_with: - "emergent-project-design-scaffold" - "awe-wonder-experience-designer" - "reflective-practice-prompt-generator" - "lesson-observation-protocol-designer" teacher_time: "3 minutes" tags: ["Reggio-Emilia", "documentation", "Rinaldi", "Malaguzzi", "visible-learning-processes", "early-years", "primary", "observation"] ---
73# Reggio Documentation Protocol
74
75## What This Skill Does
76
77Designs a documentation protocol following the Reggio Emilia approach — a systematic practice of observing, recording, interpreting, and sharing children's learning processes, not just their products. In the Reggio tradition, documentation is not assessment, display, or record-keeping — it is a research tool. The teacher-as-researcher observes children's thinking, captures their theories and questions, and uses this evidence to understand what children are TRYING to understand and to plan what to offer next. The critical principle from Rinaldi is that documentation makes learning VISIBLE — not as a finished outcome but as a living process of inquiry, hypothesis, revision, and deepening understanding. The output includes a protocol for what to observe, how to record it (photographs, transcriptions of children's dialogue, work samples), how to interpret the evidence (what does it reveal about children's thinking?), and how to share it (with children for revisiting, with families for connection, with colleagues for professional dialogue). AI is specifically valuable here because designing effective documentation protocols requires translating the philosophical principles of Reggio (the image of the child as capable, the hundred languages, learning as research) into practical observation strategies that a teacher can implement in a busy classroom.
78
79## Evidence Foundation
80
81Rinaldi (2006) articulated documentation as "visible listening" — the practice of attending carefully to children's words, actions, and representations, and making this listening visible through systematic recording and display. Documentation in the Reggio approach serves four functions: it makes children's learning processes visible to the children themselves (enabling revisiting and deepening), to teachers (informing pedagogical decisions), to families (communicating what and how children are learning), and to the school community (building collective professional knowledge). Malaguzzi (1993) described the "hundred languages" of children — the many ways children express their understanding through drawing, sculpture, movement, dramatic play, building, writing, and conversation. Documentation must attend to all these languages, not just verbal or written expression. Krechevsky et al. (2013) extended Reggio documentation principles beyond early childhood to primary and secondary contexts, showing that "making learning visible" improves student metacognition, teacher responsiveness, and school culture at any age. Edwards, Gandini & Forman (2012) documented the Reggio Emilia approach comprehensively, emphasising that documentation is inseparable from curriculum — what teachers document shapes what they notice, which shapes what they plan next. Giudici, Rinaldi & Krechevsky (2001) demonstrated how documentation panels (wall displays combining photographs, children's words, teacher interpretation, and children's work) function as "group memory" — enabling children and teachers to revisit, reflect on, and extend their investigations.
82
83## Input Schema
84
85The teacher must provide:
86- **Learning experience:** What children are doing. *e.g. "Reception children are investigating shadows — they've noticed that shadows change during the day and are full of questions about why" / "Year 2 students are building structures from recycled materials — exploring balance, strength, and design" / "Year 5 students are conducting a science investigation into plant growth — but their conversations reveal they're also developing theories about what plants 'need' and 'want'"*
87- **Documentation purpose:** Why. *e.g. "I want to capture the children's evolving theories about shadows so I can plan the next provocation" / "I need to share children's learning with families at the end of the project" / "I want to use the documentation in a team meeting to discuss what the children are understanding"*
88
89Optional (injected by context engine if available):
90- **Student level:** Age group
91- **Documentation format:** Wall panel, journal, digital
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,520 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.

≈890
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
5,285
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
3.1%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 31% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

6.2k 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, 24.7 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md24.7 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.

# Reggio Documentation Protocol · 6.2k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/garethmanning-reggio-documentation-protocol/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/reggio-documentation-protocol" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol ] || { mv .claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/reggio-documentation-protocol" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/reggio-documentation-protocol

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/reggio-documentation-protocol/ 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/garethmanning-reggio-documentation-protocol/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/reggio-documentation-protocol" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/reggio-documentation-protocol" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/reggio-documentation-protocol/ 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/reggio-documentation-protocol

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.

Reviews

—no reviews yet

Nobody has reviewed this skill yet. The rating is the mean of the reviews written here, so there is none until somebody writes the first.

Sign in to review it

A review is tied to an account so it can be answered, edited and taken down by the person who wrote it.

Sign in
Who can post

Anybody with an account, one review each. It carries the version that was current when you wrote it, and the publisher may reply once.

Publisher
Servers0
Claim this skill