Patterns.
Strategic code reading, pattern transfer (Essence/Idiom/Reify), technical debt management, design pattern selection, codebase comprehension protocols.
Engineering Meta-Skills.
What separates a senior from a staff engineer is meta-skills: the ability to READ a codebase fast, TRANSFER patterns between contexts, and JUDGE technical debt. This skill packages those meta-skills as concrete protocols. The Essence/Idiom/Reify framework is the heart - separate the universal pattern from the language-specific implementation.
Four recipes.
Strategic code reading
Read entry point first. Then trace one user-visible flow end-to-end. Then map the data model. Do not read by directory - read by purpose. Stop when you can answer questions about the area.
Essence / Idiom / Reify
Essence = the universal pattern (e.g. observer). Idiom = how this language expresses it (callback, promise, signal). Reify = the specific code in this codebase. Move freely between layers.
Technical debt taxonomy
Local debt (one file, easy fix). Cluster debt (one feature area, medium). Architectural debt (cross-cutting, hard). Each type has different management strategy.
Pattern selection
When to use Strategy vs Visitor vs Template Method. When inheritance helps vs hurts. When duplication is cheaper than abstraction.
It composes.
Skills compose into workflows. Patterns is rarely the only skill you will use — it pairs naturally with these others in the library.
One command.
Installs only stryx-patterns (skip the other 19) into ~/.claude/skills/stryx-patterns/.
Free for all use.
Stryx Labs License v1.0. Use Patterns in personal, commercial, internal, and production work. No attribution required.