ConardLi garden-skills: six SKILL.md agent skills, each released and versioned on its own

Six skills in one repository, with no single version number

garden-skills is a curated set of Agent Skills: folders with a SKILL.md that an agent such as Claude Code, Cursor or Codex can load. The repository holds six of them under skills/: motion-showreel for code-rendered short video, web-video-presentation for web video and presentations, web-design-engineer for design and frontend work, gpt-image-2 for image generation and prompting, beautiful-article for turning any source into a styled article, and kb-retriever for local knowledge retrieval.

The repository does not have one version. Its package.json is named @conardli/garden-skills, marked private, and fixed at 0.0.0, and it states that per-skill versions live in skills/<name>/manifest.json. Releases follow the same split: motion-showreel v0.1.0 on 11 October 2026, web-design-engineer v1.3.0 on 12 July 2026, and web-video-presentation v1.2.2 on 9 June 2026.

The consequence is that maturity varies by skill. A v1.3.0 skill and a v0.1.0 skill sit side by side, so check the version of the specific skill you plan to use.

Five install routes, and only the release zip is pinned

The project offers five ways to get the skills into an agent: the skills CLI through npx, the Claude Code plugin marketplace, a pinned .zip from GitHub Releases, a manual copy into your project, and a Git submodule. A .claude-plugin/ directory sits at the repository root alongside skills/.

The release zips are per skill. The current motion-showreel archive, for example, is published at github.com/ConardLi/garden-skills/releases/download/motion-showreel-v0.1.0/motion-showreel-0.1.0.zip, and the download links in the main README sit between DOWNLOAD markers that the readme:sync maintainer script rewrites.

Which route to pick depends on how much drift you accept. The release zip is the option the project itself labels as pinned, so it is the one to use when a team needs everyone on the same skill version. A manual copy or a submodule puts the files inside your own repository, where you control when they change. Check the Install section of the README for the exact commands of the npx and marketplace routes before running them.

motion-showreel renders MP4 from deterministic render(t) pages

motion-showreel produces an MP4 plus editable source. Its core is a deterministic `render(t)` page: every frame is a function of time, and the page is captured frame by frame on a shared audio and picture timeline. Stills, contact sheets, three-direction boards, proxies and masters all come from the same page, and motion blur, supersampling and film grain are render flags rather than separate passes.

Sound shares that timeline, so cuts, hits and sound effects use the same numbers. Music can come from a zero-dependency built-in synth, from Tone.js with a sampled piano, or from the user's own track with beat and drop detection. The brief sets a sound benchmark, groove, harmony, palette and dramatic arc, and lists audio defaults to avoid.

The visual side starts from a library of 43 styles, including swiss-editorial, ink-wash, risograph, synthwave, soft 3D, cinematic title, pixel game, comic panels and whiteboard explainers. Each style defines look, motion, camera grammar and sound palette, and can be mixed or replaced. Target uses are showreels, product films, UI motion, kinetic typography, logo and title sequences, and narrated explainers.

motion-showreel only narrates scripts you supply

motion-showreel has firm boundaries that shape what you can ask of it. Narration follows a user-supplied script or recording. Gemini or MiniMax TTS reads only scripts you provide, and with a recording the pictures follow the real speech timestamps. If you expect the skill to write and voice its own narration, that is not how it works: you bring the words.

Length is bounded too. Short pieces run from 5 to 60 seconds, and chapter-based films go up to 20 minutes, using persistent chapter caches.

The workflow stops twice: once to confirm topic, duration, orientation, music and sound sources and narration mode, and again to confirm style frames, with three distinct directions offered when you have not specified one. After that, production runs on its own. Technical acceptance is kept apart from taste: size, fps, duration, frame count, black frames, loudness, true peak, loop seam and determinism must all pass, while review notes go to you for the final call. At v0.1.0, this is also the youngest release in the collection.

web-video-presentation builds a stage you still have to screen-record

web-video-presentation turns scripts, articles, lessons, product demos and talks into click-driven 16:9 web presentations built with Vite, React and TypeScript. The output is meant to be screen-recorded as video rather than rendered to a file by the skill, which is the key difference from motion-showreel. You need your own screen recorder for the final video.

The stage is fixed at 1920×1080 and scales to the viewport so recordings stay stable. Navigation is a `(chapter, step)` cursor driven by clicks or the keyboard, with one narration beat per visual step. Progress controls are hidden and appear only on hover, so the stage stays clean during recording.

The workflow converts raw articles into narration scripts, maps script beats to full-screen scenes, and pauses at hard checkpoints for script, theme, outline, implementation mode and optional audio. Narration audio is optional and only synthesized after the visual outline is approved, through a provider-agnostic TTS runner. Styling uses a theme-token architecture with 23 built-in themes, among them editorial, terminal, engineering and Swiss International.

Four skills get one line each in the gallery

Outside the two video skills, the repository gallery describes the remaining four in a single line apiece. web-design-engineer is listed under design and frontend and has reached v1.3.0, the highest version number in the recent releases. gpt-image-2 covers image generation and prompting. beautiful-article turns any source into a styled article. kb-retriever handles local knowledge retrieval. The demo/web-design-demo/ folder holds an example for the design skill.

For these four, the gallery tells you the purpose and little else, so read each skill's own SKILL.md and README under skills/<name>/ before installing. That is where the actual instructions the agent follows live, and it is the only way to know what inputs, dependencies or external services a skill expects.

The practical consequence is uneven evaluation. You can judge motion-showreel and web-video-presentation from the main page; for gpt-image-2 or kb-retriever you are deciding on a one-line summary until you open the skill folder.

Maintainer scripts drive releases and keep the README in sync

The root package.json only ships maintainer scripts and requires Node 20 or later. `list` runs scripts/release/list-skills.mjs. `pack` runs pack-skill.mjs for one skill and `pack:all` packs every skill. `release` runs cut-release.mjs, and `release:dry` runs it with --dry-run. `readme:sync` regenerates README content through update-readme.mjs, and `readme:check` runs the same script with --check. `validate` chains list, pack:all and readme:check.

For contributors this means the README download links are generated, not hand-edited, and a change that breaks packing or leaves the README out of sync fails validation. CONTRIBUTING.md has English, Chinese and Japanese versions, matching the three READMEs.

The repository is MIT licensed, the last push was on 25 October 2026, and a website/ folder and a dist/ folder sit beside skills/. Despite the name, nothing here is about gardening: garden-skills is ConardLi's collection of agent skills.

Editorial conclusion

garden-skills is a good pick for someone already using Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or another SKILL.md-compatible agent who wants a ready skill for code-rendered video or record-ready web presentations, since motion-showreel and web-video-presentation are the most fully specified skills in the set. It is a weaker pick if you need the other four skills to be equally mature, because the repository gallery gives them a single line each. Before installing, choose a pinned release .zip if you need a fixed version, and check each skill's SKILL.md and its own manifest.json version rather than the repository's package.json.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official documentation
2. Official README
3. Project repository
4. Release notes