Lesson 4.2: Build Your Toolkit Structure

🎯 What You'll Learn: How to go from a toolkit plan to a real, installable folder, with everything in the right place
⏱️ Time Required: 35 minutes

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From Plan to Structure

Riley has her inventory done. She knows what goes in the toolkit. Now she's building it.

"The plan was just a document. This lesson is where it becomes a real thing, a folder someone can copy and have working in ten minutes."
— Riley Harper

In this lesson you'll create the directory structure, copy your components in, and add the template files a new installer needs. By the end, your toolkit will be structurally complete. The README and security review come next.

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Step 1: Create the Directory Structure (10 min)

# Create your toolkit folder and all subdirectories
mkdir -p ~/toolkits/margin-operations-toolkit/{skills,agents,hooks,templates}
cd ~/toolkits/margin-operations-toolkit

After this, your layout should be:

margin-operations-toolkit/
├── skills/
├── agents/
├── hooks/
└── templates/

You'll add README.md in this lesson.

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Step 2: Copy Your Components (10 min)

Move your existing skill and agent files into the toolkit folder.

# Copy skills (adjust paths to where your files actually live)
cp -r ~/.claude/skills/weekly-margin-report    skills/
cp -r ~/.claude/skills/data-validator   skills/

# Copy agents
cp -r ~/.claude/agents/risk-analyzer    agents/

# Extract the hooks section from your .claude/settings.json
# and save it as a snippet the installer can merge in

For hooks: don't copy your entire settings.json. Instead, create a hooks/settings-snippet.json that contains only the hooks block, the installer can add it to their own settings:

{
  "hooks": {
    "PostToolUse": [
      {
        "matcher": "Write",
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "echo \"$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M'): Wrote $CLAUDE_TOOL_INPUT_PATH\" >> ~/automation-log.txt"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Verify your files are in place:

# List all files to confirm they're in the right locations
find . -type f | sort

Verify every file you expect to share actually exists in the right location.

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Step 3: Create Templates (5 min)

Give installers a head-start with a CLAUDE.md they can customise:

templates/CLAUDE.md.template:

# [Your Team/Project] Automation Context

## Overview
**What this is:** [One sentence description of the automation]
**Who it's for:** [Role/team who uses it]
**Business context:** [Why it exists, what problem it solves]

## Key Terminology
| Term | What it means in your context |
|------|-------------------------------|
| [Term 1] | [Your definition] |
| [Term 2] | [Your definition] |

## Standards & Thresholds
| Metric | Threshold | Action |
|--------|-----------|--------|
| [Metric] | [Value] | [What to do] |

## Key People
| Name | Role | What they care about |
|------|------|----------------------|
| [Name] | [Role] | [Their priorities] |

Tell the installer to rename this to CLAUDE.md in their project directory and fill in the brackets.

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Validate Before Moving On

Manual check:

✅ Success Criteria:

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What Riley Built

"Looking at this folder, I can see exactly what David will get. Everything is in one place. Next I need to write the README so he knows what to do with it."

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Next Up

Lesson 4.3: Write Your README

The structure exists. Now you'll write the documentation that turns it from a confusing folder of files into something anyone can install in ten minutes.