What This Skill Does

Tags harness-decomposed curriculum items (KUDs, LTs, criteria) with a school's developmental band metadata while preserving source voice…

Context cost
5.7k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 22.7 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Tags harness-decomposed curriculum items (KUDs, LTs, criteria) with a school's developmental band metadata while preserving source voice and labels. Supply the band schema; the skill derives mapping rules from it.

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.

band-mappingcurriculum-alignmentdevelopmental-bandsframework-translationsource-voice-preservationvygotskywiggins-mctighezpd

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.md22.7 kB · preview
--- name: developmental-band-translator disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium skill_id: curriculum-alignment/developmental-band-translator skill_name: Developmental Band Translator domain: curriculum-alignment version: "1.0" evidence_strength: moderate evidence_sources: - "Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005) — Understanding by Design (2nd ed.), ASCD: backward design establishes the principle that curriculum alignment begins from stated outcomes and works backward through learning targets; band-tagging is an alignment operation on that model." - "Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2011) — The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units, ASCD: KUD as the canonical unit of translation between frameworks." - "Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) — Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard University Press: the Zone of Proximal Development provides the theoretical basis for developmental banding as an age-and-readiness construct rather than a pure age construct." - "Heritage, M. (2008) — Learning Progressions: Supporting Instruction and Formative Assessment, CCSSO: progressions are developmental rather than age-deterministic; band mappings must preserve this." - "Webb, N. L. (1997) — Criteria for Alignment of Expectations and Assessments in Mathematics and Science Education, CCSSO Research Monograph No. 6: alignment is multi-dimensional (categorical concurrence, depth-of-knowledge, range, balance) — band translation addresses only the age-range dimension and must not be mistaken for full alignment." input_schema: required: - field: band_schema type: string - field: kud_json type: string - field: lts_json type: string - field: progression_structure_json type: string optional: - field: criterion_bank_json type: string - field: source_name type: string - field: user_age_range_override type: string output_schema: type: object fields: - field: source_metadata type: object - field: band_tagged_kud type: array - field: band_tagged_lts type: array - field: band_tagged_criteria type: array - field: summary_counts type: object - field: skill_flags type: array chains_well_with: - curriculum-crosswalk - kud-knowledge-type-mapper - learning-progression-builder - competency-framework-translator - scope-and-sequence-designer teacher_time: 10 minutes tags: - developmental-bands - curriculum-alignment - band-mapping - source-voice-preservation - Wiggins-McTighe - Vygotsky - ZPD - framework-translation ---
81# What This Skill Does
82
83This skill tags an external curriculum — already decomposed by the curriculum harness into KUD items, learning targets, and (optionally) criteria — with a school's developmental band labels. The school's band schema is supplied as an input; the skill reads it, derives a mapping table from the source's age ranges to the school's band ranges, and applies that mapping across every item. Every item receives a school_band value, a confidence level, and diagnostic flags. The source's own band labels are preserved verbatim alongside the new school band tags, so the output can always be traced back to, and interpreted against, the original framework.
84
85The skill is a metadata operation, not a content operation. It does not rewrite KUDs, LTs, or criteria, and it does not reinterpret the source's intent. Its only job is to answer the question: "If a teacher planning for a given school band opened this framework, which of its content is relevant to them?" The skill is deliberately conservative where a source band spans two school bands: it assigns both candidate bands, sets an ambiguity flag, and records a rationale. Downstream skills — especially the Curriculum Crosswalk skill and the human planning process — resolve these ambiguities with teacher judgement.
86
87The skill handles three common source-structure scenarios. Most sources have an explicit band structure (Welsh CfW Progression Steps, NZ Curriculum Levels, IB PYP/MYP/DP phases) which maps cleanly with occasional boundary ambiguity. Some have a formal-but-compressed structure (UK RSHE has four Key Stage labels but only two actual age bands in the statutory document), where the skill applies the source's real 2-band structure first and records the formal label via source_band_preserved. A minority have no band structure at all (CASEL, some competency frameworks), where the skill maps by developmental descriptor rather than age and flags every item for teacher review.
88
89# Evidence Foundation
90
91**Wiggins & McTighe (2005, 2011)** — Understanding by Design establishes KUD (Know / Understand / Do) as the unit-level architecture through which framework content becomes teachable, and positions curriculum alignment as a backward-design operation from stated outcomes. The Developmental Band Translator operates on exactly the KUD layer that UbD specifies, and treats school-band assignment as one step in a backward-design pipeline whose final consumer is the classroom teacher.
92
93**Vygotsky (1978)** — The Zone of Proximal Development grounds the concept that developmental banding is not a pure age-partition. A learner in a given band is defined by what they can do with support, not only by their chronological age. This justifies the skill's use of both age-range and developmental-descriptor evidence when tagging, and its willingness to assign a school band from descriptor-based reasoning alone when age evidence is absent.
94
95**Heritage (2008)** — Learning progressions literature reinforces that progressions are developmental trajectories, not calendars. The skill treats school bands as trajectory-waypoints. Where a source's native progression is coarser than the school's (e.g. RSHE's 2-band structure vs a 6-band school schema), the skill preserves the coarseness honestly via ambiguity flags rather than forcing false precision.
96
97**Webb (1997)** — The canonical alignment framework defines four alignment dimensions: categorical concurrence, depth-of-knowledge consistency, range-of-knowledge correspondence, balance of representation. Band translation addresses primarily the *range* dimension (do the age spans match?) with partial touch on *categorical concurrence*. The skill does not claim to assess depth or balance alignment; this limit is reported in skill_flags and in Known Limitations.
98
99# Input Schema
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,931 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.

≈1,390
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,285
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.8%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 28% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

5.7k 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, 22.7 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md22.7 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.

# What This Skill Does · 5.7k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/what-this-skill-does-2/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/what-this-skill-does-2" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2 ] || { mv .claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2 "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/what-this-skill-does-2" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/what-this-skill-does-2

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/what-this-skill-does-2/ 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/what-this-skill-does-2/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/what-this-skill-does-2" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2 ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2 "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/what-this-skill-does-2" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/what-this-skill-does-2/ 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. It appears as developmental-band-translator in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, what-this-skill-does-2.

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/what-this-skill-does-2

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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